On the day of New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill’s first budget address, JerseyCAN, the only statewide advocacy organization in New Jersey committed to ensuring access to high-quality public schools for every child, regardless of zip code, cultural background, and socioeconomic status, released a policy brief, entitled “Policy Prescriptions: 5 Concrete Ways to Mobilize New Jersey toward Student Success,” outlining and advocating specific policies to measurably improve academic outcomes in New Jersey. Having witnessed the lack of progress brought on by decades of one-offs and temporary fixes seen from previous administrations, JerseyCAN’s brief was specifically designed to showcase, during these budget-strapped times, efficiencies that can be implemented or augmented swiftly at the state and local levels, largely with budget-neutral commitments.

“New Jersey’s public schools excel in several regards but as JerseyCAN illuminated several months ago in our NAEP commentary, Louisiana, Mississippi, and other southern states that rank among the ten most impoverished in the country are now actually surpassing New Jersey, one of the wealthiest states in the nation, in various academic outcomes, leaving with us with an obligation and a moral imperative to make sound investments in our children’s futures,” Paula White, Executive Director of JerseyCAN.  “JerseyCAN created this policy brief specifically for this fiscal moment, highlighting that some of our largest education challenges can actually be addressed through vision, innovation, and building better, stronger processes. In this document, we share immediate opportunities for mission-critical budgetary investments, alongside showcasing small but high-impact, budget-neutral changes that will address long-ignored issues.  We applaud Governor Sherrill for her transparency and candor on budget and education policy as the state tackles vexing challenges in education, and we look forward to working with the Governor in any capacity to finally move the ball forward.”

JerseyCAN’s “Policy Prescriptions: 5 Concrete Ways to Mobilize New Jersey toward Student Success” can be found HERE.  Specifically, the brief  supports a needed policy shift to begin efficiently mobilizing academic resources; building a clear, statewide commitment to academic readiness; and creating an optimal landscape for earning college credits, graduating from college, and earning industry-valued credentials.  

Among the policy recommendations that are thoroughly detailed in the brief:

1.  Implement current literacy laws with fidelity and pass new, complementary literacy legislation.

2.   Improve and modernize New Jersey’s mathematics landscape.

3.   Provide universal access to high-impact tutoring, annexed to high-quality Tier I instruction.

4.   Use college-level standardized assessments to gauge academic competency, award college credit, and drive remediation.

5.   Strengthen the non-college pipeline by connecting high school students to industry-valued credentials in New Jersey.

The release of today’s policy brief follows a series of reports published by JerseyCAN, including “Credit Where Credit is Due: Charting the Course for Cost-Effective, Career-Ready Futures in New Jersey,” which proposed a two-pronged, cost-effective approach to support New Jersey High Schools by significantly expanding college-credit learning opportunities and industry-valued work accreditations for career-ready jobs.  In addition, to address the state’s literacy crisis, JerseyCAN released the report “Leveraging Literacy – The Path to Education Recovery in New Jersey,” which served as the policy anchor to JerseyCAN’s ambitious campaign to bring the issue of literacy to the forefront in New Jersey and established the New Jersey Legacy of Literacy Coalition (NJLL), which united a diverse array of New Jersey organizations to address the literacy crisis in the State.  Eventually, these efforts contributed to the passage of New Jersey’s “Literacy Bill Package” which included Bill A2288 (ACS), directing the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) to establish the Office of Learning Equity and Academic Recovery, and Bills S2644/2645/2646 (SCS), requiring the NJDOE to establish a working group on student literacy; mandating universal literacy screenings for kindergarten through grade three students; and requiring literacy-related professional development for certain school district employees.