Evan Scott is a lifelong New Jersey resident, a veteran, and a retired military service member. He holds a bachelor’s degree in education and was elected to his hometown’s Board of Education in 1988. Now living in Evesham Township, NJ, he continues to advocate for fair and transparent school funding.

Ask the average New Jersey taxpayer how the state decides what it costs to educate a child, and you’ll get a blank stare.

Ask even engaged parents or local officials, and most will point to budgets, property taxes, or state aid formulas.

Almost no one will mention the mechanism that sits at the very foundation of the entire system:

Professional Judgment Panels — known as PJPs.

Yet these panels are where the numbers begin.

Under the School Funding Reform Act (SFRA), New Jersey’s school funding formula is built on what is called an “adequacy model.” The idea is straightforward on paper: determine what resources a school district needs to meet state academic standards, calculate the cost of those resources, and fund districts accordingly.

So how does the state decide what resources are “needed”?

It convenes Professional Judgment Panels.

These panels are made up of educators, administrators, and subject-matter practitioners. They are asked to design a hypothetical “model school district” capable of delivering the state’s core curriculum standards.

Panelists specify everything they believe that district should have:

• Teachers and class sizes.
• Reading specialists.
• Guidance counselors.
• Technology staff.
• Security personnel.
• Professional development.
• Instructional materials.
• Student support services.

They also estimate how many of each position or program would be required.

Those resource assumptions are then converted into costs — salaries, benefits, supplies, facilities, and services. The result becomes the state’s “base per-pupil amount” — the starting price tag for educating a student.

From there, the formula layers on additional funding weights:

• More for high school students than elementary.
• More for at-risk students.
• More for bilingual learners.
• More for special education needs.

All of it builds on the original panel-defined resource model.

In other words, billions in state education funding flow from a cost structure that began as expert judgment about what schools should have.

That does not make the model illegitimate. Professional expertise has value.

But it does mean the public should understand what PJPs are — and what they are not.

• They are not outcome studies.
• They are not performance analyses.
• They do not begin with measured achievement gains.

They begin with professional consensus about inputs.

The School Funding Reform Act itself reflects this logic: funding is calculated by determining the cost of delivering the state’s educational standards and adjusting for student needs and district characteristics.

That framework answers a budgeting question:

“What resources should schools have?”

It does not, by itself, answer a performance question:

“What level of spending produces academic success?”

Understanding that distinction is critical to modern school funding debates.

When policymakers argue districts are “under adequacy,” they are referencing a spending target derived from this panel-based resource model.

When taxpayers see rising education budgets, they are seeing the downstream effect of those same assumptions — updated for salaries, benefits, and inflation.

Professional Judgment Panels are not widely discussed in public forums. They operate largely outside public awareness.

Yet they define the financial architecture of New Jersey’s education system.

If residents want to understand how school funding works — or why spending debates never seem to have a clear endpoint — they have to start where the formula starts:

With the panels that decide what education should cost.