The REAL Objection to Adequate School Funding

Every once in a while, the school defunders give away the game:

[NJ State Senator Mike] Doherty [R- Tea Party] also brought up what he said was another broken promise from Christie. He said the governor had promised to make equal school funding a key theme of the 2013 campaign, in which all 120 seats in the Legislature were up for grabs. He expanded on that when I spoke to him Friday. 

"It was the perfect issue for putting Democratic suburban legislators on the defensive and rallying our suburban base," said Doherty. "But instead of fighting for school funding, it was all about running for higher office." [emphasis mine]

Doherty has been crying about the "unfairness" of giving more state aid to districts with more at-risk students for years. He makes unsubstantiated charges of fraud in the classification of students as being "at-risk." He ignores the vast amount of evidence that money does, indeed, matter when it comes to educating children in economic disadvantage. His hypocrisy in demanding more for his own suburban district while leaving urban districts, full of student sof color, to hang is simply stunning.

But even Doherty hasn't, so far as I know, admitted until now what his jihad against education funding adequacy is really all about: naked political posturing.

I guess there's one good thing about gerrymandering districts: "safe" politicians like Mike Doherty can feel free to say what's really on their minds every once in a while. And what's on New Jersey's Worst Senator's™ mind?

Clearly, it's not the education of kids in poverty.