Two decades ago, the New Jersey Supreme Court in "Abbott v. Burke" mandated that the state establish high quality preschool education in the 31 highest-poverty school districts. New Jersey created a pre-K program with high standards and a continuous improvement system that transformed a patchwork of private and public programs into a…

In the 2009 "Abbott v. Burke XX" decision, the New Jersey Supreme Court approved the SFRA formula as a replacement for the previously Court-ordered "parity" and "supplemental funding" remedies for the longstanding violation of the constitutional right to a thorough and efficient education of students in 31 urban, or…

New Jersey's Abbott Preschool program is of broad national and international interest because the Abbott program provides a model for building a high-quality system of universal pre-K through public-private partnerships that transform the existing system. The program offers high-quality pre-K to all children in 31 New Jersey communities with high…

This report seeks to describe how New Jersey became a national leader in early education and PreK-3rd, identify its successes and challenges, draw lessons from its experience for policymakers in other states and nationally, and provide recommendations for New Jersey policymakers to translate progress to date into sustained, large scale learning…

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), the federal stimulus package, will over the next two years provide all states with federal funding to support early learning opportunities for 3- and 4-year-olds. This investment clearly reflects Washington's acknowledgement of the link between high-quality early education and the nation's…

New Jersey's continued commitment to preschool is in line with a growing body of research that shows an investment in such programs produces both short-term and long-term gains for children, their families and their communities. In fact, a series of studies from the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) in 2007 and 2009 found…

In a series of New Jersey Supreme Court decisions known as Abbott v. Burke, the 28 (now 31) urban school districts serving the state's poorest students were ordered to create systems of high-quality preschool for all three- and four-year-old children, beginning in the 1999-2000 school year. The Abbott Preschool Program now serves approximately…

The mission of the Education Law Center (ELC) is to ensure public school children access to an equal and high quality education. Over the past year, they expanded their efforts to achieve that goal using the innovative advocacy strategies presented in this report. Highlights include: (1) Providing legal services to 479 low income and disadvantaged…

New Jersey's urban--or "Abbott"--schools have improved at the preschool and elementary school level, but lag when it comes to middle and high school performance. These are the key findings of an Abbott Indicators Project report entitled, "The Abbott Districts in 2005-06: Progress and Challenges." The report was prepared by…