On Wednesday, August 5th, the State Board of Education – and the public, if so inclined, — will hear  the “Annual Report of the State Operated School District of Camden City Public Schools.” Every year the Education Commissioner  gives an update on all districts under state control, which right now is only Camden, although Lakewood may be next. Commissioner Lily Laux and Camden Superintendent Alfonso Q. Llano Jr. will review the district’s progress, probably focusing on the last few years although state control began in 2013 under Gov. Chris Christie.

Camden City has acquired a national profile for successfully creating a kind of portfolio system: Families can select among three different kinds of public schools: traditional district schools (the ones under the microscope on Wednesday), public charters, and “renaissance” schools, which are hybrid district/charters that originally operated as “turnarounds,” replacing failing district schools and taking all enrolled students, functioning as collaborative partners.

In anticipation of the Annual Report, it’s worth looking at how district school students fare compared to renaissance school students.

Bottom line: renaissance school students learn more than district students at two-thirds of the cost, despite having higher enrollments of kids with disabilities, multilingual learners, and those from low-income families. This isn’t news. The data are consistent over multiple years. Yet, with a new governor in Trenton, one who seems willing to not pay complete obeisance to NJEA (which is fiercely opposed to non-traditional schools), is it worth widening the scope of the success, even if it means reviving a specific, time-limited bipartisan piece of legislation (the “Urban Hope Act”) that created the hybrid schools? 

Example: In Trenton City, 8% of third graders read at grade level and just 12% are proficient in math. What if those students’ parents had access to the choices available to Camden parents?  (Trenton has 7 charter schools but almost 3,000 students are on wait lists.)

So let’s look at the numbers, all from the DOE database. (Note: Camden has three renaissance school operators, Mastery, KIPP, and Uncommon. For the purposes of simpIicity I’m just using data from Mastery although the data from the other two are similar. You can see for yourself on the DOE”s VASTLY IMPROVED interface.)

First off, at the meeting on Wednesday Superintendent Llano will likely highlight — as he should — some important gains made by his students (89% low-income, 16% with disabilities, 15% multilingual learners). For all 6,000 students, fifteen percent now meet grade-level expectations in reading and 10.6% do in math, a solid improvement over the last few years.  (This is 2024-2025 data, the most recent available on the state database.)

A few other details: of Camden’s 16 schools, 8 are identified under federal law for “comprehensive support” and two for targeted support. (Big improvement since the state takeover when 23 out of 24 schools were on that list.) For the state’s purposes last year, 15 schools were required to develop a corrective action plan. Forty-four percent of students are chronically absent, which means they miss more than 10% of school days. 

Finally, in times of intense budgetary constraints, it’s worth looking at how much New Jersey taxpayers spend on Camden schools, which legally, constitutionally, and morally require higher costs than wealthier district. Last year the cost per pupil was $33,587.

Now let’s look at Mastery Schools of Camden, where 95% of students are low-income, 20% have disabilities, and 28% are multilingual learners, higher percentages than district schools. For its 2,900 students, 32% meet expectations in reading and 21.4% do in math, percentages twice as high as district schools. No schools are identified for support or need corrective action plans. 

The chronic absenteeism rate is 7%, compared to the district’s 44%. The annual cost per pupil is $23,270, $10K less per student than the traditional district. (KIPP is $22K, Uncommon is $24K.)

New Jersey DOE and State Board, what are we doing? 

There may be details hidden under these numbers that account for the huge disparities in academic opportunity and success for students. For example, among classified students, does the district have those with the most severe disabilities? How much do union constraints about seniority, length of school year, student behavior affect teaching and learning? How long are the wait lists for the renaissance schools? (Parents register through a unified platform called One Camden.)

Yet these are questions with answers. I don’t know if the State Board presentation on Camden will be a perfunctory exercise or a deeper dive into what the district can or should do differently. Yet if I could, I’d ask state policy makers two questions: If you lived in Camden and couldn’t move to a different zip code or afford private school, where would  you want to send your kid? And, given that NJ has developed a successful portfolio model for low-performing districts, why isn’t the state working to expand that model to cities like Trenton and Asbury Park?