John Migueis is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and the administrator of NJ21st.com, a platform dedicated to analyzing and reporting on municipal, education, and state issues affecting New Jersey’s 21st district.

As the perception of “New Jersey has great schools” gives way to a more sobering reality—”your kids might achieve proficiency in math if you can afford tutors”—I’ve grown increasingly interested in examining the inequities within New Jersey’s education system.

Recently, Newark and Camden have resurfaced in discussions on my feed, prompting me to consider how a dashboard similar to the one I created for my own community might be a helpful contribution.

In an attempt to provide a meaningful comparison, I chose five additional large urban districts alongside Camden and Newark: Elizabeth, Union City, Trenton, Jersey City, and Paterson.

The source for the budget information below in the Taxpayers Guide To Education Spending (not sure why they can’t put out one big spreadsheet to make things easier) and includes 2018 -2019 through 2023-2024.

The source on proficiency data come from the NJ DOE Performance Reports and includes 2018, 2022 and 2023.

The data below includes only traditional districts defined by the NJ DOE; however data on other schools within the districts (public charters in Newark, charter and renaissance schools in Camden) are available on those sites.

The source on household median income is from the US Census.

Median Income:

Other than Jersey City, Districts on this Dashboard fall well below NJ’s median income ≅ $97,000

Cost Per Pupil

Camden, Jersey City and Newark are the top three on cost per pupil spending 2023-2024.

Newark leads the list in average year-to-year percentage increases in per-pupil cost, reaching $24,253; most likely this substantial growth is a consequence of past state underfunding. Newark’s year-over-year increase, although substantial, is not anomalous when considering the overall distribution of per-pupil costs across districts.

A year to year breakdown on Newark cost per pupil percentage increase is as follows:

• 2019-2020: 10.12%
• 2020-2021: 3.78%
• 2021-2022: -2.92%
• 2022-2023: 7.95%
• 2023-2024: 21.11%

Proficiency

The only district on this Dashboard that is at or above pre-pandemic English Language Arts (ELA or reading) student proficiency rates is Union City, with 58% of students scoring at or above expectations. Statewide, the proficiency rate was 52.2%.

As you can see, the scores prior to the Covid-19 pandemic were nothing to celebrate anyway (and that is true of most NJ districts). What you can also see here is the overall drop in district scores.

As with ELA, Union City is the only District on the Dashboard to meet or exceed pre-pandemic pass rates in math, with 33% of students meeting or exceeding expectations. (The statewide proficiency level was 39.6%)

Science is a disaster – which is the case for most NJ school districts; statewide 24.8% of students reached proficiency. Here, Jersey City tops this list with 23% of its student meeting or surpassing expectations.

The graphs below provide an interesting visual that demonstrates median income in connection to average pass rates for each district across the three testing periods for each subject area.

ELA:

Math:

Science:

There is much more to unpack here and some interesting comparisons we can make to suburban districts that illustrate our schools aren’t as great we thought they were (yes, even pre-pandemic) and the role wealth plays in compensating for significant vulnerabilities in our education system.

It is worthwhile to be aware of the myth that urban schools are money-drains. The per pupil costs above are very much in line with suburban districts.

Millburn, as an example, is paying $27,275 per pupil (~$3,000 more than Newark) and their proficiency scores are standard deviations ahead (85% pass rate on ELA, 68% pass rate on Science, 82% pass rate on Math). The difference may be the +$250,000 median household income available to Millburn households (versus Newark’s $46,000) that can go to overcoming school system deficits through private avenues.

To look at the raw data behind these graphs you can open and download this table.