From my column today at WHYY’s Newsworks:
New Jersey has one of the most segregated public school systems in the country, primarily because our local school district boundaries closely mimic municipal ones. Thus, 22 percent of Cherry Hill Public School district students are black and Hispanic while, six and a half miles away in Camden, 99 percent of students are black and Hispanic. In leafy Moorestown (Burlington County), 12.4 percent of students are black or Hispanic while nine miles down the road in neighboring Willingboro black and Hispanic students comprise 97 percent of enrollment.
A relatively new program, the Interdistrict Public School Choice Program (IPSCP), elegantly addresses this unconstitutional segregation. However, this past summer the N.J. Department of Education mangled that elegance with a series of graceless pratfalls.
Read the rest here.
