As New Jersey’s latest standardized test scores come out slowly from the State, the N.J. Charter School Association issued a press release that highlights the gains that charter schools made in  narrowing the achievement gap among minority students for five years in a row:

Statewide figures indicate that charter school students demonstrated growth on the NJASK for the fifth consecutive year in a row with an increase of more than 13 percentage points over the past five years. This news is especially significant in light of statewide scores which remained flat for the past four years and comparative district scores which saw a slight drop in proficiency. Statewide HSPA scores indicate  that charter high school students made significant gains in proficiency of nearly 19 percentage points in the same timespan. Comparative districts increased by 10 percentage points on HSPA, while the state remained the same year-on-year. The charter school students’ scores are encouraging, particularly when viewed across demographic splits addressed in the achievement gap analysis.