New Jersey’s leaders—Gov. Phil Murphy, former Education Commissioner Angelica Allen-Mcmillan, NJEA president Sean Spiller— love to proclaim that New Jersey has the best schools in the nation. 

National education expert Tim Daly begs to differ.

In a recent piece called “Are State Education Rankings All Wrong?,” Daly, former president of the renowned TNTP (formerly The New Teacher Project) and founder of EdNavigator, explains that ratings publishers like US News and World Report, EdWeek, and WalletHub that rank NJ schools near the top are wrong. New Jersey schools, he says, are “overrated.”

Why?

We are a pretty rich state. For what it’s worth, US News ranks us the richest state in the country. The children of those rich people are predominantly white and/or Asian and tend to excel in school. In districts like Princeton and Montclair, says Daly, students start kindergarten already reading and parents pay for “dozens of hours” of private tutoring. “Such schools,” he surmises, “could spend all day teaching the kids to make sculptures out of mashed potatoes and they would still finish first in many rankings.”

It’s only when we stop staring at shiny objects and dive below the surface that we see how we’re overrated.

The data Daly uses is from the highly-regarded National Association of Educational Progress, or NAEP), specifically the 2022 results in 8th grade math. (NAEP only tests in 4th and 8th grade using representative groups of students, not the whole state enrollment.) In 8th grade math, New Jersey ties for the fourth highest average score in the country. That’s great! But when we look at how poorly we educate low-income students and non-white/Asian students, the story is very different:

• NJ Hispanic students ranked 9th in the US.

• NJ Black students ranked 17th in the US.

• NJ low-income students ranked 25th in the US.

By the way, in that last category we are only one slot higher than Kentucky, which spends half as much money per student.

Daly’s look at more granular rankings tells us something important: It is not inevitable for students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds to do poorly in school. In fact, they can excel. Daly makes a surprising comparison—to Texas, of all places.

• TX Hispanic students rank 6th in the country, three places above NJ. 

• TX Black students rank first, in a tie with Massachusetts.

• TX low-income students rank 9th, 14 slots above NJ.

Troubling, right? 

Daly also looked at students whose parents graduated college, which gives their children a big leg up on non-college parents. These students do great in NJ, ranking third in the nation.  What about NJ children of parents who didn’t graduate high school?

We’re #27.

Writes Daly,

“The picture is consistent. Kids with more advantages do very well in New Jersey. Outcomes for other kids are mediocre. Is that an elite system?…[I]f we’re talking about which states systematically provide the best education, it’s important to consider what a state can do for students who face challenges. In that respect, New Jersey is middling. Not awful. Middling.

A striving parent with limited resources looking to move near the ‘best’ schools would probably be better off choosing another state.”

What say you, Gov. Murphy and NJEA?