When Khalif Cooper of Paterson heard gunshots in his Paterson neighborhood last June, he started running in the other direction.. Police officer Jerry Moravek was running too, but pivoted and fired his gun at Cooper’s back. The bullet, according to today’s New York Times, “penetrated the young man’s lower back before ripping through organs and coming to rest near a vertebra that controls lower-body movement.” By morning, Mr. Cooper, who is Black, 29 years old, and the father of two young girls, “had lost a kidney, half his colon and his ability to ever walk again.”

Eventually Moravek was charged with aggravated assault (he remains on paid leave) and the state just took over the Paterson police department due to a long history of corruption, more fatal shootings by police than any other community, and racism. (Cooper is suing the city for $50 million to cover his lifelong medical care and support for his daughters.) The Times article also looks at the Paterson Public Schools district, which educates 25,000 students—it’s NJ’s fourth largest district—and was taken over by the state in 1991 due to a history of terrible student achievement,  fiscal irregularities, and nepotism. That particular takeover lasted 30 years.

Yet, post-takeover, the academic prospects for Paterson students remain grim. According to the most recent data, only one out of four district students is proficient in reading and one out of ten is proficient in math. Among new high school graduates, according to North Jersey, “just 7.8% of Paterson students who took the test were deemed graduation-ready in language arts and 7.5% in math.” At one of the district’s elementary schools (School 15), just 10% of third-graders read at grade-level, an important benchmark for academic growth. The state redacts the number of third-graders proficient in math because the percentage is so low.

The chronic absenteeism rate (students missing 10% or more of school days) is 50%. Average SAT scores are 408 in reading and 389 in math.

How about general dysfunction? Has that improved after three decades of state control?

Paterson district students spent 524 days in remote instruction during COVID school closures, with some students relying on paper packets that included no new material; only one other district was closed longer. Over 1,300 staff members have quit during the last three years, leaving so many vacancies that the district started offering $7,500 signing bonuses for new teachers. 

All this for $20,360 a year per student.

When the State Board of Education officially handed back local control to the district, Vice President Andrew Mulvihill told administrators,

“We owe our dearest apology to the folks in Paterson for our failure to turn around the mess that we took over. Clearly, we’ve proven in this particular case — and I’m not sure particularly why — that we were unable to turn the ship in Paterson on the issue of student achievement. We’re sorry. We have failed you.”

If the outcome of the Paterson school district state takeover is a proxy for the Paterson police department, Khalif Cooper’s fight for police reform will fail too.