NJ Education Report

This is a press release from the New Jersey Children’s Foundation.*

At risk today is the fate of 8,500 children and countless parents who have, or will soon, enroll at seven Newark charter schools since the state approved their expansion in 2016.

Five years later, it’s clear that the horrors warned of by the ELC’s Chicken Little rhetoric in this case have turned out to be false in every way. The sky didn’t fall, in fact, the opposite happened:

• District and charter school students have posted massive learning gains in math and reading–on just about any absolute or relative basis;
• High school graduation rates in both sectors are up;
• The district was not left bankrupt with an over-concentration of students in poverty and students in need of special education services.
• In fact, annual state aid to the district has gone up nearly $200M since 2015 and local funding for the district has gone up as well.

A mountain of research is now showing that these learning gains at BOTH Newark’s district and charter schools are not just significant in New Jersey, but are nationally significant and outpace the progress we’ve seen in just about every other city in America.

• Newark City Study, Stanford University CREDO, 2021.
• The Effect of Attending a Charter School in Newark, New Jersey on Student Test Scores, Marcus Winters, Boston University, Wheelock Graduate School of Education.

• Resilience: Will Urban Schools that Beat the Odds Continue to Do So During the COVID-19 Pandemic?, Jesse Margrady Ph.D., Margrady Research.

• A New Baseline: Progress in Newark’s District and Charter Schools from 2006 to 2018, Jesse Margrady Ph.D., Margrady Research.