If you are a parent who wants a great education for your children and has the financial means to buy a house in a high-performing New Jersey school district, you might look at the ratings on a platform like Niche and say, “hey, we should move to Montclair!” While the average house there might cost $1 million, you’d feel confident your kids will graduate well-equipped for a successful career.

The problem with this scenario, as posed by a partnership between the non-profits Wake Up Call NJ and National Parents Union (NPU), is that student achievement in Montclair district schools is lower than you might think: 62% of students taking Algebra don’t meet course requirements and 35% of fourth graders (a critical time in literacy) are below grade level in reading. 

 The other district highlighted by the partnership is high-flying West Windsor-Plainsboro (average home price $900K), considered the fifth best district in the state and awarded an A + by Niche. But 41% of third graders fail to meet grade expectations in reading and 34% of 4th graders are not on grade level in math.

Neither Montclair nor West Windsor-Plainsboro has plans to fix this problem. It’s not even clear that administrators, teachers, parents, and students know about the disconnect. To bridge that gap and improve educational outcomes across the state, Wake Up Call NJ and NPU intend to inform communities and, secondly, provide support to come up with solutions.

“Parents in all NJ school districts need clear and timely information about their children’s math and reading skills,” explains Laura Overdeck, one of the principals at Wake Up Call NJ. “We are shining a bright flashlight in two communities to show the actual academic performance of their students, where up to one in three are not meeting grade-level expectations in math and reading.   This reality doesn’t align with the glowing reputation of these two suburban districts and hundreds more across the state. Only by embracing the truth can we work together to improve outcomes for all NJ students.”

Surprised by the breakdown between perception and reality? That is understandable because, like many other school districts not only in NJ but across the country, report card grades don’t reflect actual academic growth:  80% of NJ students get A’s and B’s on their report cards; a national study finds the majority of grades are unaligned with actual student knowledge. In addition, most school boards don’t set specific math and reading goals in strategic plans, the NJ Department of Education withholds results from state standardized tests until months after the data is available,  and district communication to parents rarely includes objective assessments of academic progress.

But what if report cards gave parents candid evaluations of growth  and even included results from state standardized tests with their child’s math and reading grade levels? What if at every school board meeting the public heard a presentation on their district’s progress in meeting academic goals? What if parents had real-time access to all in-school assessments to track their child’s growth?

Getting to “yes” is the goal of this seven-week campaign that intends to elevate parents’ voices, close the honesty gap, and inspire change. The campaign launched on Monday, September 22nd and will, as representatives from both organizations explained in a recent interview with NJ Ed Report, include signs, direct mail, advertisements, and social media, first identifying the problems and then offering solutions. NPU staff who live in New Jersey will work with local parents to build grassroots councils that train parents to advocate for straight talk from school boards — how is this new initiative affecting student learning? How many students reach grade-level proficiency? What do report cards actually evaluate? — and tasking school boards with setting reality-based strategic goals.

As Overdeck says, only by embracing the truth can we work together to improve outcomes for all NJ students, regardless of where their parents can afford to live.