NJ Education Report

should apply for the new NBC series, “School Pride,” a sort of extreme makeover reality show for decrepit public schools. According to the Star-Ledger, a large crowd of Barringer students walked out to protest a “filthy,” “unsafe” school environment rife with “rats, mice, cockroaches, spiders, and fights in the hallways.” Two weeks ago a 15-year-old student was sexually assaulted in a classroom. There’s no principal: the former administrator left to go work at a charter school, the current principal is out on medical leave, and students report that they didn’t receive class schedules until the third week of school

A Newark Schools official assured parents that the system exterminates vermin regularly.

That’s not the only problem with Barringer. Here’s the rundown: in 2008-2009, according to DOE data, 65.3% of juniors and seniors failed the language arts portion of the High School Proficiency Assessment and 73.5% failed the math portion. (How to square those scores with the fact that the DOE reports that 90.6% of students graduated high school by passing the HSPA? Got me.) A quarter of the senior class doesn’t show up on any given day; in fact, daily attendance grades 9-12 is 79%. All this for a comparative cost per pupil of $19,305.