Cerf Will Pay to See Progress on School Reform Agenda

Can financial rewards help bring about change in New Jersey's public schools? Apparently, the Christie administration thinks so.

In the latest move to use money as an incentive, Gov. Chris Christie's administration has added to its new school funding plan a multimillion dollar program to reward schools and districts that meet specific goals and implement targeted reforms.

Acting education commissioner Chris Cerf outlined the new "Innovation Fund" in last week's 83-page report on school funding, which serves as the basis of Christie's proposed system for distributing state aid to schools next year and beyond.

Under Cerf's plan, the Innovation Fund would serve two functions.

First, it would provide dollar rewards to schools that make specific achievement gains, such as the largest improvement in fourth-grade reading scores for low-income students or the biggest jump in graduation rates.

Second, it would serve as the central pool of funds for a competitive grant process. Schools would apply for specific projects and programs that meet the Christie administration's reform agenda for raising achievement, including greater teacher accountability or strategies for helping the very lowest-performing schools.

"For the first time in New Jersey's history, state education aid would be merit-based," Cerf wrote in the report.

That is an overstatement, since the vast bulk of more than $7 billion in state aid will remain enrollment- and needs-based. But Cerf said $50 million would be allotted to the Innovation Fund, starting in 2013. The fund is not included in Christie's budget presented last week, but instead would presumably be part of his fiscal 2014 budget.

The program is a continuation of the administration's new push to provide dollar incentives to schools to make gains and adopt preferred policies. It is an approach that has gained favor in the federal education policy under the Race to the Top competitions, which gave money to states to implement specific reform policies favored by President Obama and his administration.

New Jersey itself has been part of that process, last week announcing separately it would provide $19 million of its recent Race to the Top grant to districts that meet specific program goals, including teacher evaluation and curriculum training. More than 370 districts could to tap into the funds, from a few thousand dollars in smaller districts to more than a million in large ones like Newark, Paterson, and Jersey City.

But even before New Jersey won the federal grant, Cerf had been talking about a state-level competition for New Jersey that is akin to Race to the Top. Earlier this month, he announced a $1 million reward program for special education programs that showed the greatest achievement gains last year. Twelve districts received awards of up to $100,000.

In addition, the state's new accountability system will include a category of Reward Schools, in which the very best performing high-poverty schools could receive up to $100,000.

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