Despite laws promoting school integration since 1881, a 2017 study by the UCLA Civil Rights Project found that New Jersey has the sixth-most segregated classrooms in the United States.
New Jersey has substantially smaller school districts per capita than other states, effectively dividing attendance by municipality.
New Jersey, the most densely populated state in the country, with the second highest per capita income, has a well-developed public school system.
A change to its constitution in 1947 outlawed overt segregation in schools, a decade before Brown v. Board of Education.
That same constitution retained the state's commitment to home rule -- that townships and municipalities are the primary form of local government.