Categories: General

U.S. Senator Cory Booker on Newark’s Educational Transformation and “Real School Choice”

Last month Sen. Booker gave a speech at the American Federation for Children annual meeting in D.C. Here’s an excerpt, or you can see the whole speech on YouTube:

Newark has gone through, in the last decade, an astonishing change, when it comes to school choice, when it comes to a massive expansion of opportunities for our children. 

Things that I talked about with people in this room, more than a decade ago, that were some of my toughest political battles, now have become a reality, with about 40 percent of our kids not just in charter schools, but we have one of the top-three highest-performing charter sectors in the United States of America. 

In fact, in my city, which is majority-African-American, the number of kids now that are going to schools that beat the state proficiency average over the last decade has gone up 300 percent for African-American children, and the number of African-American kids going to high-performing schools has gone up 200 percent. Newark was just noticed by a [Center on Reinventing Public Education] study of schools … [as] the no. 1 city in American for so-called “beat-the-odds” schools that are high-poverty and high performing. 

We have a lot to brag about in Newark, in this cauldron of educational creativity we’ve created, that has been liberating the choice of our parents. 

As the Brookings Institution said, Newark is now the no. 4 city in the country for offering parents real school choice.

Laura Waters

View Comments

Recent Posts

BREAKING: Statement from JerseyCAN on State’s Long-Delayed Release of Student Test Results

This is a statement by Paula White, Executive Director of JerseyCAN, on the New Jersey…

2 years ago

NJEA: Murphy’s Elimination of Teacher Performance Test Is a Major Win for Students and Educators

This is a press release. Earlier today, Gov. Phil Murphy signed a bill to eliminate…

2 years ago

Murphy Signs Bill Eliminating EdTPA Test for Teacher Certification

Today Gov. Phil Murphy signed Senate Bill 896, which prohibits the New Jersey Department of…

2 years ago

LILLEY: Blue States Had More School Closures and More Learning Loss — Just Like NJ under Gov. Murphy

The 74 conducted a study of the relative learning loss in Democratic (Blue) and Republican (Red) states and…

2 years ago

One of Newark Superintendent’s New High Schools Tolerates Racism Against Black Students

In October 2020 Newark Superintendent Roger Leon announced with great fanfare the opening of district’s…

2 years ago