According to a new analysis of recent data from New Jersey’s state standardized tests, nearly 73% of Newark School District’s third through eighth graders aren’t reading on grade level.

These appalling proficiency rates will have lifelong consequences for city students. As the Children’s Reading Foundation notes, “third graders who cannot read on grade level today are on track to be our nation’s lowest income, least skilled citizens.” And you can’t blame this just on Covid.

From today’s TapintoNewark:

Only 19% of the city’s third graders passed last year’s state reading exam; the performance was the lowest of any grade in Newark. At nine Newark schools, the percentage of third graders passing the English exam was in the single digits.  For all grades, Newark’s literacy passing rate was 27% last year.

Robert Clark of the Newark Trust for Education called the citywide illiteracy rate “scary.” Vivian Cox Fraser, head of the Essex County Urban League, told Tapinto, “These scores must raise our sense of urgency about the crisis we are facing in education.” JerseyCAN CEO Paula White, responded, “Newark’s third grade students are living in a city of abundance but as it stands, most will never benefit from any of the city’s assets based on their current academic skills,” National figures are calling the “right to read” the civil rights issue of our time.

Literacy is one of the greatest civil rights issues of our time. Only 1/3 of children read at grade level. I'm proud to say I'm executive producing @righttoreadfilm, coming this spring.

If literacy is freedom, and I know it is, then let's make sure all our children are free. pic.twitter.com/XKE2hKVo3C

— LeVar Burton (@levarburton) January 18, 2023

A primary reason for the lack of basic reading skills is that leaders don’t require direct phonics instruction. (Tapinto: These tools “haven’t landed in Newark yet.”)  You may have heard the term “science of literacy” from Emily Hanford’s riveting report “Sold a Story,”  which dissects the myth that students learn to read by picking up context clues (known as “Whole Language”) even though cognitive scientists know students must be able to, as Hanford says, “look carefully at the word, sound it out, and connect the pronunciation of the word with the spelling and the meaning.”

But it’s been a long slog for our educational institutions to evolve, even though we know if young students are not exposed to daily phonics instruction you get results like you have in Newark. For instance, the Murphy Administration’s Department of Education, according to a new analysis from Excel in Ed, has failed to adopt “minimal fundamental literacy principles.” Of the 17 identified principles, our DOE has adopted only four; three states (Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire) rank lower than us.

[Historical note: this is old news. Back in 2000, the National Reading Panel found that “teaching children to manipulate phonemes in words was highly effective across all the literacy domains and outcomes.” Yesterday’s New York Times, in “Kids Can’t Read: the Revolt That is Taking on the Education Establishment,” quotes an education official who blames our national failure to oversee effective reading instruction on “politics and bureaucratic snafus.”]

Yet, DOE inertia aside, nothing is stopping superintendents from requiring teachers to use effective methods to teach reading. In Newark, Superintendent Roger Leon and the city school board need look no further than the contrast in literacy levels between district students and public charter students.  According to student scores on the same assessments highlighted in the Tapinto article, we find that Newark charter school students, demographically comparable to district students,* have far higher reading proficiency levels, for instance, 60.5% among third-graders at North Star Academy Charter School and 44% at Great Oaks Legacy Charter School.  What are the charters doing differently? The leaders at these and other top-tier Newark public charters require teachers to use foundational skills like phonemic awareness so students can decode words, not just guess through context clues. (Example: North Star’s “Phonics and Fluency Content Guide.“)

Meanwhile, as Superintendent Roger Leon continues his attacks on charters to protect his market share and fatten his real estate portfolio, academic and career prospects for district students plunge in all five city wards.

This isn’t rocket science.

Here are the literacy rates for each of Newark’s five wards:

In the West Ward:

In the East Ward:

In the North Ward:

In the South Ward:

In the Central Ward:

*Note on demographics: According to the DOE database, 73% of Newark district students are economically-disadvantaged and 16% are eligible for special education. At North Star 85% are economically-disadvantaged and 10% are eligible for special education; at Great Oaks, 89% are economically-disadvantaged and 13% are special education-eligible. As is typical throughout the city, charters enroll more Black students and the district enrolls more Hispanic students.