Florida Public Schools Get Better Results — Especially for Disadvantaged Kids — for Less than Half the Price
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January 16, 2025NJEA President Sean Spiller has often claimed that New Jersey’s public schools are the best in the nation, and now as a candidate for governor, he’s touting this claim as part of his qualifications for the office. In a recent interview with InsiderNJ, Spiller once again stated: “We have the number one schools in the nation.” He goes on to add:
The success of the school is going to be determined by the success of the student … In the end it’s about results.
But by Spiller’s own measure, New Jersey does not have the number one schools in the nation. As we noted last week, New Jersey 4th-graders ranked 5th in the nation in reading and 9th in math on the NAEP tests (known as “America’s Report Card”). So when it comes to Spiller’s own measure — student success — the results are clear: New Jersey schools are not number one.
When it comes to disadvantaged kids (who qualify for free/reduced-price lunch), New Jersey fares even worse. Thanks to NJEdReport, we learned that Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who is also a candidate for governor, called Spiller out for his claim. Baraka noted that while New Jersey’s education system
… may be #1 for white and Asian students, if you compare New Jersey’s Hispanic students to students in other states, we’re #9 and for Black students we’re #17. Among students who qualify for free and reduced lunch, New Jersey comes in at #25 [emphasis added].
Spiller appears content to ignore the results for disadvantaged kids. And no wonder: As Sunlight noted last week, disadvantaged children in New Jersey suffered cataclysmic learning loss from 2019, with NAEP test scores down -11 in math and -7 in reading. This is where the extended school closures that Spiller and the NJEA pushed for — and that Gov. Murphy allowed — really hurt New Jersey children. Spiller would rather have us forget about that.
The other salient point is that New Jersey gets inferior results while paying a lot more. In other words, in no small part due to the NJEA, New Jersey spends $24,200 per pupil (3rd-highest in the nation), while Florida, which outperformed New Jersey on the NAEP tests, spent $11,200 — less than half as much. Massachusetts also gets better student results while spending less than New Jersey.
As Baraka pointed out, this is particularly true when it comes to disadvantaged kids. NJEdReport provides a helpful graph that shows NAEP performance adjusted for demographics (including disadvantaged kids): Massachusetts is #1, Florida is tied for #2 … and New Jersey is #11. ALL of the ten states ranked higher than New Jersey spend less than New Jersey, most of them substantially less.
The EdWeek rankings that Spiller likes to cite are flawed: EdWeek counts the amount of education spending as a per se positive — the more a state spends, the better — and it is New Jersey’s very high level of spending that propels it the top ranking. But in the real world — as Spiller, himself, acknowledged — it’s student success that matters most. And taxpayers want their taxes used efficiently: more spending is not per se better, and in New Jersey’s case, our inferior results mean it’s decidedly worse — especially when we include the results for our disadvantaged kids.
Mayor Baraka was right to call out Spiller. New Jersey must do better for its disadvantaged kids, and it’s shameful for Spiller to ignore this reality. Both as Montclair mayor and as NJEA president, Spiller pushed to keep schools closed during the pandemic. The consequences were cataclysmic. Now he wants everyone to believe that everything is just great and forget his own role in New Jersey’s educational underperformance.