LEE: NJ Education Commissioner’s Decisions are ‘Crushing Blow to Low-Income Students of Color’
February 9, 2022
New Survey Results from Asbury Park: ‘The State Needs To Come In and Shut This Place Down’
February 9, 2022A Tweet-Thread To Gov. Murphy Re: His Decision To Prioritize Politics Over Newark Students and Families
Monday: @PhilMurphyNJ: “If it’s a high-quality top performing school, regardless of what school it is…we’ve never, ever, ever been, ‘Hell no to charters.”
Tuesday: @PhilMurphyNJ when the highest performing charter in NJ asked to expand: “Hell no.”🧵⬇️https://t.co/2rmi2SbNVS
— Kyle Rosenkrans (@KyleRosenkrans) February 9, 2022
North Star Academy was denied despite earning literally the highest ranking Murphy’s own ed department can give a charter school in NJ: Tier 1 status. So we’re already in hypocrisy territory.
— Kyle Rosenkrans (@KyleRosenkrans) February 9, 2022
Murphy admin officials have also tried to say they looked at “impact on the community” with these decisions. Let’s talk about that:
— Kyle Rosenkrans (@KyleRosenkrans) February 9, 2022
The local community supports North Star Academy, as a majority of the Newark City Council and a state legislator also wrote in support of the application. But the district superintendent & some other politicians also opposed it. At best, a draw. So that alone surely can’t be it.
— Kyle Rosenkrans (@KyleRosenkrans) February 9, 2022
As our polling of actual Newark voters show, they support charters in a major way, and it’s growing. So it can’t be that the broader community didn’t like this. https://t.co/oZahD0UmRZ
— Kyle Rosenkrans (@KyleRosenkrans) February 9, 2022
The educational impact of high quality charter growth in Newark has been nationally significant: Newark charter sector has consistently outperformed almost every other city studied. https://t.co/pJmNSVljRE
— Kyle Rosenkrans (@KyleRosenkrans) February 9, 2022
There are more proficient black students in the North Star Academy schools than in the entire Newark school district, despite the district having 3X the number of black students.
— Kyle Rosenkrans (@KyleRosenkrans) February 9, 2022
Over the last decade+, Black students in Newark were 4X more likely to attend a school beating NJ’s “Best in Nation” public school performance that @GovMurphy likes to tout. https://t.co/wOiYMjenFb
— Kyle Rosenkrans (@KyleRosenkrans) February 9, 2022
With almost 75% at proficiency, North Star Academy’s mostly black and low income students are reading and doing math at levels above kids in many of NJ’s the wealthiest, whitest towns. This is a success story in racial equity that can’t be told enough.
— Kyle Rosenkrans (@KyleRosenkrans) February 9, 2022
And over this time of meteoric growth of Newark charters, the district didn’t go into some kind of death spiral. It simply didn’t happen. In fact, test scores and HS grad rates went up. District funding was up too, even before ARP. https://t.co/wOiYMjenFb
— Kyle Rosenkrans (@KyleRosenkrans) February 9, 2022
So it can’t be about “local impact” on learning outcomes or finances either. So what was it really about?
— Kyle Rosenkrans (@KyleRosenkrans) February 9, 2022
This was really about giving local district superintendents a veto over charter school decisions, as @PhilMurphyNJ promised when he first ran in 2017–despite the obvious conflict of interests this poses. What he couldn’t do via legislation, he’s doing via administrative action.
— Kyle Rosenkrans (@KyleRosenkrans) February 9, 2022
Meanwhile, there are dozens of families at a school like Phillips Academy, with THREE DAYS to fill out an enrollment application who may have to go to a school like this https://t.co/WgoQQXqHlM
— Kyle Rosenkrans (@KyleRosenkrans) February 9, 2022
