Over the past several decades, school funding in New Jersey has been through multiple reforms in attempts to provide districts with enough funding to offer students a thorough and efficient education. The most recent funding formula adjustment has led, and may continue to lead, to significant funding decreases for the majority of Sussex County, New Jersey. With schools forced to budgetary cuts, the question becomes how much money is necessary for schools to provide an education and does more money equate to higher student achievement? The current study did not put forward any hypotheses but did attempt to find the relationships between student achievement and total spending per pupil while considering other variables such as District Factor Groups as well as school enrollment. To address these research questions, the quantitative approach was deemed the best approach to the study, since it allowed the researcher to investigate the relationship between the data points. (ProQuest abstract).

School funding in the State of New Jersey has a long history of judicial and legislative reform efforts. In 2008, a weighted and adjusted formula was approved to determine how much state aid each district would receive on an annual basis. Recent changes to state aid have underscored the fragility of the funding system. Those who make decisions regarding how much spending is adequate to ensure thorough and efficient education need quantitative data to support changes. The purpose of this line of inquiry was to examine how the measures of per pupil expenditures and spending, as compared to what is considered adequate, relate to student achievement in New Jersey (NJ) high schools. In other words, does money matter in NJ schools? There have been research studies on related topics; however, these questions have been largely unanswered, given the context of the current political and economic landscape in NJ. This study examined the relationship between student achievement and two different measures of educational funding in the state of New Jersey: (1) per pupil expenditures and the (2) state's adequacy budget. There is a lack of quantitative data supporting the use of these spending measures as benchmarks or guides to support financial decision making. A multiple regression found that there was no statistically significant relationship between per pupil expenditures and student achievement on the SATs after adjusting for district factor groups. Thus, per pupil expenditures are not a reliable measure of how much money districts should spend. A one-way ANOVA found a statistically significant difference in the means of adequacy budget ratios (spending/NJ's adequacy budget calculation) groups when compared to achievement on the SATs. Districts with "over-adequate" spending had higher average SAT scores, while districts with "below-adequate" spending had lower average SAT scores. This study found that NJ's adequacy budget calculation can be relied on to determine how much spending is necessary at the district level. (ProQuest abstract).

Legislators, policymakers, and educators rely on empirical evidence from research to make financial decisions regarding education funding. The purpose of this study was to examine the expenditures of the school districts in the Commonwealth of Virginia for the period of 2007 to 2017 and to determine what effect the level of expenditures had, if any, on student achievement at the state, region, and district level. The researcher found a negative correlation trend between per pupil expenditure and average Standards of Learning pass rate for students in Virginia, for students in the 19 school districts of Region VII in Virginia, and also for the students in a small rural district in Virginia. The researcher concluded that per pupil expenditure alone was not an accurate predictor of student achievement and that the socioeconomic status or poverty level of the student was a more reliable predictor of performance on SOL pass rate.

Education finance policy in New Jersey has been shaped by over 30 years of school finance litigation. Through its decisions in "Robinson v. Cahill" (1973-1976) and "Abbott v. Burke" (1985-2005), the justices of New Jersey's supreme court have defined the state's constitutional guarantee of a "thorough and efficient" education, set parameters for how the state's urban schools should be funded, and provided guidance on how education dollars should be spent in these communities (the so-called Abbott districts). In January 2008, the legislature enacted a new funding formula, the School Finance Reform Act of 2008, which jettisons the court's remedies. The court upheld the constitutionality of this law in its 20th "Abbott" ruling issued in May 2009. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of court-mandated school finance reform in New Jersey and describe the School Finance Reform Act (SFRA) of 2008 and its potential impact. The first section of this paper provides the demographic and economic context for education policy in New Jersey. The second and third sections describe how the court has defined educational "success" or "adequacy" over the last 30 years and how New Jersey measures an adequate education. The fourth section looks at the impact of school finance reform on education spending, taxation, and student achievement. The fifth section describes SFRA and its impact and the most recent round of litigation. Appended are: (1) Regular Education Budget per Pupil, Districts Grouped by Property Wealth per Pupil, 1975-76 through 2007-08, CPI Adjusted; (2) Regular Education Budget per Pupil, Districts Grouped by Property Wealth per Pupil, 1984-85 through 2007-08, Abbott Districts Separated, CPI Adjusted; and (3) School Tax Rates, Districts Grouped by Property Wealth per Pupil, 1984-85 through 2007-08, Abbott Districts Separated, CPI Adjusted. (Contains 6 figures, 7 tables and 17 footnotes.).