The rise and demise and resurrection of the New Jersey school district: Localism versus systematization, 1664--1900

The New Jersey school district has long been the political unit at the center of issues involving local control, State-driven systematization, and economic efficiency of schools. Though a variety of motivations and conditions have over time shaped a district culture, the underlying force most powerful in the formation and maintenance of districts has been taxation. This historical study draws on primary source documents including State and Township Superintendent of Schools reports, newspaper articles, educational laws, and Supreme Court decisions to explain the events and developments contributing to the prominence of the school district as a determinant of both educational matters and municipal formations through the nineteenth century. I assert that these events and developments undergird many of the current features of New Jersey's system of schools with respect to local control and school funding. Works focusing on the educational history of New Jersey (Burr, 1942; Murray, 1899) have not sufficiently examined the impact that localized control in the face of State oversight has had on the school structure of today. Though several authors (Tyack, 1974; Kaestle, 1983; Ravitch, 1974) have examined centralization patterns in both rural and urban settings, virtually no author has zeroed in on New Jersey. This state warrants special study, however, because today it is the most splintered and dense in the United States with respect to school districts and municipalities per square mile and because of the taxation crisis that is directly related to school funding. Autonomy in school matters is something that has always been prized by New Jerseyans, even at the expense of higher rates of taxation and excessive municipal formations.;Patterns of school governance emerged in New Jersey's colonial period as European groups established schools and schooling structures in the settlements of East and West Jersey. During New Jersey's early period as a state, a tradition of heavily localized control over school districts had emerged, just as a nascent State bureaucracy was beginning to form to supervise said districts. From the Civil War period to the end of the nineteenth century, the dueling traditions of localized control of schools and a burgeoning State authority in school matters had it out in legislative, judicial, and community arenas. The culminating moment in the showdown between local control and State-coordinated system occurred in 1894. That year, the State Legislature passed what was a known as the Township School Act, legislation that had the effect of consolidating every school district in New Jersey into one entity governed by one school authority in the township in which they were located. Yet the law, which reduced the number of operating school districts in the state from 1408 to 374, met with immediate resistance, with communities subverting the law by incorporating as municipalities around school district lines. The result of these actions, as well as of the history of localized school control characteristic of the balance of the nineteenth century, was the perpetuation of a fractious and economically inefficient system of schools and municipalities. Such a system continues in force today.