This was first published by the Editorial Board of the Press of Atlantic City.
Public charter schools have developed innovative approaches to education that have reduced costs and given parents of at-risk students alternatives to failing traditional public schools in New Jersey inner cities.
The state’s charter school program was begun by Gov. Christie Whitman and strengthened under Gov. Chris Christie.
As we’ve said, the state should respond to the success of charter schools by supporting them and removing barriers to their further innovation and service to students in need.
Gov. Phil Murphy has said he is generally supportive of charter schools, but he is closely aligned with his most powerful political backer, the New Jersey Education Association. The teachers union is the enemy of alternatives to its rule over public schools in the state and has fought to minimize the number of charter schools and their funding.
The record during the Murphy administration suggests political concerns have been outweighing educational ones. The New Jersey Public Charter Schools Association says the state Department of Education has denied 70% of expansion requests from the highest performing charter schools since Murphy took office.
This year state officials rejected applications by nine of the 17 charter schools that sought to teach an additional grade or add seats to existing classes.
Public charter schools are tuition-free public schools authorized by the state Department of Education, and their expansion also requires state approval. The state says it decides based on finances and academic standings, including some test scores.
Charter school officials say the letters rejecting their expansion plans include some reasons, but not details about where their application fell short or what’s needed for approval.
Trenton Achievers Early College Prep Charter School serves students in grades six through nine. Although it only opened in 2018, the state cited test scores from the 2018-2019 academic year in denying its application to add grade 10. School officials say 75% of current students weren’t attending then.
“A lot of decisions were made with no rhyme or reason. The Department of Education should be calling balls and strikes based on clear, objective criteria, but unfortunately, that did not happen this past round,” Harry Lee, president of the New Jersey Public Charter Schools Association, told New Jersey Monitor.
The administration’s lack of support has denied educational opportunities to thousands of children, especially in minority dominant school districts. The state’s 87 public charter schools serve 60,000 students, but another 20,000 are on lists waiting to be admitted.
Parents have demanded and gotten more school choice the past couple of decades in an effort to ensure their children get a quality education. Since 2005, the number of U.S. charter schools has doubled and their students have tripled, to 7,700 schools teaching 3.5 million students, according to the National Alliance for Charter Schools.
In the 2020-21 school year alone, enrollment in New Jersey charter schools increased 3.4%, while traditional public schools lost 2.6% of their students.
But don’t expect a state politically dominated by its teachers union to be among the leaders in the school choice movement anytime soon. That shift still left charters with less than 5% of N.J. students. In California, charter schools teach 11% of all public school students.
The school choice leader these days is Arizona, where nearly 20% of public students attend charter schools. In July, it enacted the nation’s most expansive school-choice program. All families will be able to spend the state funds for their children’s education — about $7,000 a year per student — on any approved education expenses, including private-school tuition and fees, tutoring and instructional materials.