This is a statement by Paula White, Executive Director of JerseyCAN, on the New Jersey Education Department’s long-delayed release of last spring’s student assessments. The information on school and district performance is here.
This is a sobering day for the state of education in New Jersey and shows us all that it is easy to boast New Jersey has the best education system in the country, but much harder to make that statement a truism for all children in our state.
One might be able to slow down the sharing of information, even dump information the Friday before the Holiday Season – but facts still matter. Information sharing and transparency remain potent tools to help inform our learning recovery.
Today, we should all be grateful to the US Department of Education, New Jersey’s families, school leaders and advocates, and elected leaders like Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz and Senate Education Committee Chair Vin Gopal who all called out the need for the New Jersey Department of Education to release this important data. And while this conversation should have started months ago – tomorrow, the real work begins.
JerseyCAN looks forward to finally being able to comprehensively review the data that has been shared. We will identify meaningful implications, include them in our continued fight to make education policy the state’s highest priority, and do all we can to help create a true all-hands-on-deck plan to address New Jersey’s learning crisis.
