Compensatory Education consists of remediation services for Math, Language Arts, and Reading.
Each service has been capped at $995.33 for the current school year. That figure does not take into account the “off the top” administrative costs by the provider. That figure has not been increased since the 2008-2009 school year.
As a result of the static amount, the services have been reduced. There is no required number of minutes per week required for this service established by the New Jersey Department of Education. When the law was first enacted in 1977, it was determined that the child receive at least 45 minutes per week in service. However, in recent years that amount has been reduced by many service providers and districts to as little as 25 minutes per week. In many instances, the class size has also been increased in these remedial programs in order to meet the statutory limit of $995.33 per service.
It is almost impossible to show significant effects in remediation with so little “time on task.” Our goal is to have these children remediated and not have them serve as “lifers” in the Compensatory Education programs.
This year, a miscalculation of the number of eligible students by the NJDOE reduced the per-pupil amount by 15%, thus forcing eligible students to lose 15% of their hours of service from the onset of the program in September.
We are asking for an increase to $1,100 per service for qualifying students.