With all the heated rhetoric of the presidential race, we hear much about immigration and the economy but little—if anything—about the state of public education in America. This is in spite of the fact that, as a new report from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) notes, more than half of U.S. voters say the country’s public pre-K-12 education system “is headed in the wrong direction. Only 16% express satisfaction with public schools, and 32% say they aren’t sure.” From the report:

“To put it mildly, leaders of neither political party are responding with alacrity to public demands for change, reduced inequality, increased academic rigor, and greater parental voice in their public schools.” 

Yet  PPI, in “Searching for the Tipping Point: Scaling Up Public School Choice Spurs Citywide Gains,” points to some bright spots, ten cities where public charter schools have reached what the authors call a “critical mass,” enough seats for 33% or more public school students to choose schools other than their traditional district school. Among the top four are Camden and Newark which have seen dramatic improvements in student outcomes, “achieving on par” with students in higher-income districts.  Importantly, academic growth is not limited to charter school students: ”In every case where charter schools reached or exceeded that scale, academic growth rose across the entire city for all of a city’s low-income students.”

In other words, “these school systems are creating a ‘rising tide’ effect for all students.”

In Camden, 68% of students are enrolled in charter schools or “charter-like schools.” (In Camden these are renaissance schools, turnarounds authorized by a 2012 state law; see here for a deeper dive.) Between 2010-2023, low-income students in these schools have closed the gap with higher-income students by 42%.

As Lauren Camera writes in the 74,

“Today, Camden is considered one of the country’s most innovative districts. More than two-thirds of students attend public charter or renaissance schools, enrollment is climbing and the city is steadily, if incrementally, closing performance gaps among low-income kids.”

Giana Campbell, CEO of Camden Education Fund notes, “There has been slow but steady progress in Camden. Sure, there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done, but when we look at where the city was 10 years ago, we’re really, really encouraged by the progress that we’re seeing across the city.” 

In Newark, where 35% of low-income students attend charters, the gap has closed by an impressive 45%.

The PPI report includes a case study of a Newark student, Taniyah Owens, who, like other Black students in the city, are “four times more likely to attend a high-quality school” due to the strength of the public charter sector. Growing up “in a family that didn’t really have it together” and primarily raised by her grandmother (her father was incarcerated and her mother was quite young), she found Newark district schools unwelcoming, with some teachers “essentially telling urban students to ‘suck it up’ rather than to ‘sit down’ so we can have a conversation.” 

In seventh grade she transferred to Great Oaks Legacy Charter School and, she says, her aspirations went from “no college to all college.”  There, exposure to academic rigor, combined with Great Oaks’ college-going culture helped Taniyah see herself, “for the first time ever,” as actually going to college. And, with continuing support from Great Oaks, she is now a first-generation college graduate pursuing a master’s degree in clinical social work. Simultaneously, she is serving in an administrative role as an AmeriCorps-sponsored fellow — right back at Great Oaks, working alongside some of the teachers she grew up with. 

The PPI report concludes with recommendations for states that seek to improve urban student outcomes. Many are relevant to New Jersey’s charter school law, which hasn’t been upgraded since its initial passage in 1995. Also notable: PPI recommends strengthening universal enrollment systems where parents can choose easily among all public schools.

Here are PPI’s recommendations:

• Adopt  policies to further strengthen public charter schools. 
• Improve authorizer quality.
• Adopt or strengthen an existing unified enrollment system.
• Develop a pipeline of talented school leaders. 
• Intentionally increase interactions between district schools and charter schools 
• Increase outreach to parents to ensure every parent in the community is aware of their choices 
•  Encourage the formation of organizations that can incubate strong charters and innovation schools.