NJ Governor Jon Corzine Creates Commission on New Americans

Seven days before leaving office, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine issued an executive order creating a 23-member Commission on New Americans, to be housed in the Department of the Public Advocate.  The appointment of the Commission, consisting of 17 public and 6 ex-officio members, was a key recommendation of Corzine's Blue Ribbon Panel on Immigrant Policy, which issued its final report in March of 2009. 

As described in the executive order, the primary goal of the Commission is to develop a "holistic statewide policy of immigrant integration" in order to "ensure that all state agencies provide services in an efficient and culturally and linguistically competent manner." It will also review progress in implementing the recommendations contained in the Blue Ribbon report.

The charge to the Commission is quite broad and ambitious. The Commission is viewed as "the central coordination and oversight entity for the inter-departmental collaboration regarding immigrant integration," with authority "to call upon any department, office, division, or agency of this State to supply it with any information, personnel, or other assistance available to such agency as the Commission deems necessary to discharge its duties..."

In addition, the Commission is empowered to "evaluate the structure and organization" of state, county, and local government, including independent authorities and local school districts, in an effort to determine the best method for achieving immigrant integration.

The executive order also charges the Commission to produce a "resource guide" to "targeted services" available to immigrants through a "maze of state and local resources," and to become "a repository of best practice models for effective immigrant integration at the local government level," as well as a source of "technical assistance to any municipal or government entity that requests such assistance." The order also calls on the Commission to produce an annual report to the governor.

New Jersey's budget dilemma, however, places severe constraints on the operation of the Commission and raises doubts as to the ability of the Commission to achieve its important mission. According to the executive order, staffing will be assigned to the Commission at no cost to the state, but rather through a "redirection of existing resources," either from the Office of the Governor or from the Department of the Public Advocate.

Whether those resources will materialize, however, is an open question. With 51 attorneys and a comparatively miniscule budget of roughly $17 million, the Department of the Public Advocate is not particularly well-resourced to provide staff support to the Commission.  Moreover, the Department has statutory responsibility for a wide array of concerns, including protection of  NJ homeowners from unwarranted evictions and abuses of eminent domain, investigation of  utility rate increases, mental health advocacy, advocacy for the developmentally disabled, child advocacy, and general citizen relations with state government Yet there is a logic behind housing the Commission within the Public Advocate's office, described in its enabling legislation as the "principal executive department of the state dedicated to making government more accountable and more responsive to the needs of average New Jerseyans."  

The Commission may also suffer by association with the administration of a departing Democratic governor.  In a less than auspicious note, New Jersey Republican State Chairman Jay Webber faulted Corzine's move as an attempt "to make policy into the Christie Administration" and to "expand the size of government yet again." However, the new Governor Chris Christie could reshape the Commission over time by replacing current commissioners with members more to his liking. The 17 public members have staggered terms ranging from one to three years, with the first batch of 6 ending their initial terms of service in 2011.

The decision to house the Commission within the Department of the Public Advocate's office also exposes it to cost-cutting moves targeting the Department itself.  Originally created by Democratic Governor Brendan Byrne in 1974, the Department was abolished when Christine Todd Whitman became governor in 1994, and then reinstated in 2005. Christie's opponent in the Republican primary Steve Lonegan called for the abolition of the Public Advocate's office, but Christie himself has not taken a position on the question.

New Jersey stands at an important crossroads in its effort to implement a comprehensive immigrant integration policy. The establishment of the Commission is an important first step. That effort can either be embraced by the new governor, signaling bipartisan commitment to immigrant integration and reflecting a consensus as to its connection to good governance and quality service delivery, or rejected.  Rejection could take two forms, either an outright attempt to abolish the Commission, or what is equally lethal: starving the Commission of the staff resources necessary to its proper operation.  In that scenario, New Jersey is left with the trappings of reform, but not true reform.

The failure of the New Jersey In-State Tuition Bill in the State Senate -- withdrawn yesterday by its sponsors for lack of sufficient votes to ensure passage -- calls for a review of the strategy pursued by supporters in their long campaign to permit undocumented high school graduates to attend local colleges at in-state rates. New Jersey is not alone in running into strong headwinds with such measures. Other states, such as Maryland, Colorado, and even liberal-leaning Massachusetts, have failed to enact similar legislation. In some of the ten states that have passed such legislation, efforts to repeal are a constant threat.

What went wrong?  It seems as if allies were missing in key places. Republicans, for example, appeared to be united in opposition. Although no votes were actually held on the floor of either house, there was not a single Republican who had announced support for the measure in either house, and to complicate matters, incoming Governor Christie announced his intention to veto any bill that came to his desk during his term as governor.  In the other ten states where in-state tuition bills have been passed, Republican support was often critical to passage.  Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, for example, was a strong champion of in-state tuition legislation in that conservative state, and is a co-sponsor of the Dream Act in Congress.

In Hatch's case, and with other Republican lawmakers in Utah, their support was solidified through direct contact with the young people seeking to realize their dream of higher education. An illuminating history of the passage of in-state tuition in Utah is found in a recent report issued by "Voices for Utah's Children." Although nativist voices are trying to enforce their version of ideological purity on the Republican Party, backers of in-state tuition should not abandon the effort to convince immigrant-friendly Republicans to back the measure, and they should do it "up close and personal," as was done in Utah.

Business groups in New Jersey were also missing in action. Indeed, some may have been lobbying behind the scenes against the measure, arguing the futility of providing higher education to young people ineligible to work legally in the United States. The underlying assumption behind this position is that Congress will fail to provide a future path to legalization for these young people, either through the Dream Act or the Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Whether this is wishful, wrong-headed, or hard-nosed thinking is a matter of debate.

The business case for in-state tuition is strong, however. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, "Immigrant families tend to fall in the lower income bracket, which means that the cost of college factors heavily in their children's ability to attend. Provision of tuition at instate rates to those who meet residency and tax criteria could go a long way to allowing these students to contribute to their maximum potential." A report by Anastasia Mann for New Jersey Policy Perspective on the in-state tuition issue in New Jersey also stresses the economic argument.  Local school districts have already made a considerable investment in the education of these children through high school. Why should a wall be erected to prevent them from capitalizing on this investment? In Utah, the business community, including the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce, has been an important ally in beating back repeated attempts over the years to repeal the Utah law. My guess is that the business community in New Jersey would find such arguments equally compelling.

Guest Blogger: Tom Sticht, International Consultant in Adult Education

At the turn of the new century, in February 2000, I wrote a report in which I expressed my optimistic thoughts that the Adult Education and Literacy System (AELS) was positioned to become a "high growth" educational system for the 21st century with the power to reach not only adults, but, through the intergenerational transfer of attitudes and knowledge, to reach children, too. I noted that many adults look for the non-formal, "functional" education that helps them achieve short-term goals of a specific nature. I argued that the extraordinary diversity of the adult population requires education that is much different from that of the K-12 or higher education systems.

Later, in September of 2000, the National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) published and distributed a report entitled From the Margins to the Mainstream: An Action Agenda for Literacy. The report called for a system of QUALITY services for adult students, ease of ACCESS to these services, and sufficient RESOURCES to support this quality and access. The report called for action to get the federal budget for the AELS up to $1 billion by 2010.

What Happened During the Decade?

Regarding QUALITY: Presumably, the more full-time professional personnel in an educational system, the better the quality of the system. Using this indicator of quality, in program year 2001-02 there were a total of 153,390 personnel in the AELS, and 21 percent were full-time. The number of students per full-time personnel was 87 to 1. By program year 2004-05, there were

144,169 personnel, but only 15 percent were full-time, and the student to full-time personnel ratio was 116 to 1.

The National Reporting System reported that an average of some 60 to 65 percent do not complete an arbitrarily defined learning level in either ABE/ASE or ESL in a given year. What this means about quality is not clear since the various states use different methods (various standardized tests, portfolio assessments) to determine learning outcomes for a given year.

During the decade the only federally funded national research center aimed at improving the quality of adult literacy education was discontinued.

Regarding ACCESS: Unfortunately, access to the AELS plunged in the first decade following the National Literacy Summit report. A large drop occurred in enrollments in the AELS from some 4 million in 1999 to fewer than 2.5 million at the end of the decade.

Regarding RESOURCES: At the end of the decade, in 2009, the funding for state grants for the AELS from the federal government was still over $400 million below the $1 billion target called for in the Action Agenda of 2000. The web page for ProLiteracy Worldwide advertises that $800 dollars educates an adult for one year.

An additional blow to resources came when funds for the federal Even Start family program was cut drastically from some $250 million in fiscal year 2002 to just over $66 million in 2008. Fortunately, the AELS field was able to ward off a move to totally drop funding for the AELS at the federal level.

The Fall From the Margins of Education

At the end of the first decade of the 21st century my optimism in 2000 has been replaced by pessimism. Instead of the unique education system that I envisioned in 2000, which would not be like the K-12 system, the field has moved more toward the provision of a "mini-K-12-college prep" education system for adults.

Perversely, as the ProLiteracy Worldwide web page indicates, federal and state funds combined provide on average only some $800 per enrollee, about one tenth of average expenditures for a K-12 child in a year, while the AELS is expected to educate adults from as low as the 2nd grade reading level up to where they can meet college entrance standards!

Ironically, at the end of the decade, it was announced that the National Institute for Literacy (NIFL), which published the Action Agenda in 2000, was to be disestablished in 2010.

Overall, it appears that instead of moving from the margins to the mainstream of education in the first decade of the 21st century, the AELS is no longer even on the margins of education. Perhaps the decade from 2010 to 2019 will be better. But who knows. Clearly, we don't always get the change we hope for!