At last week’s meeting of the Newark Board of Education, district leaders explained grim student outcomes on last spring’s standardized tests—especially in reading— by pointing to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re coming out of a unique and historic window caused by the pandemic. And students have been seen to have lost a lot of ground in regard to their achievement,” said Rochanda Jackson, who leads the district’s Planning, Evaluation, and Testing Office.

Superintendent Roger Leon chimed in, “I want everyone to understand that the impacts of the pandemic are very real….The data that we shared now is … alarming, it should scare everyone. The last thing I want to do is say the C word over again, but I want everyone to understand that the impacts of the pandemic are very real and are lived and will be lived.”

According to Tapinto, he said it will take “five years and almost four months for every student in our school district to actually undo the realities of what happened.”

Except Newark students’ lack of literacy predates the pandemic. These new test scores show that only 19% of third-graders are reading proficiently, a benchmark for future academic success, the same as last year. District–wide, reading scores were up two points, from 27% proficiency last year to 29% proficiency this year. Stakeholders were hoping for better, given the district’s $1.3 billion annual budget and an extra $300 million in federal COVID emergency funding.

But it’s just not that much better. This might be because Newark students’ pre-pandemic baseline was pretty low.

According to New Jersey’s “Early Literacy Crisis for Black Children,” in 2018-2019—the school year before the pandemic—very few Newark district students were reading proficiently. In sixteen district schools that serve third-graders, the data shows, fewer than than one in four students was meeting expectations. A few examples: that year at Avon Elementary School only 15% of third-graders could read at grade-level; at Cleveland Avenue it was 12%; at George Washington Carver it was 11%; at Quitman Street it was only 10%.

Newark’s leadership is doing some things right, like integrating Science of Reading pedagogy into instruction. And, hey, at least Leon has reported district-wide scores out to the public; we wait in anticipation for the State Department of Education to share information it’s had for months. Also, let’s be clear: this is not all on Newark. According to the report on the Early Literacy Crisis, New Jersey “ranked lowest among states for early childhood reading proficiency progress.”

Nonetheless, the report has a list of recommendations for Newark (actually, for all of Essex County where scores were low: 16 Newark schools, one each in Orange and Belleville, and three in Irvington). These recommendations are partially based on Mississippi’s remarkable success over the last decade in increasing student progress and the recovery its students have made since COVID school closures. NPR calls it the “Mississippi Miracle,” although educators there chafe at the phrase, wanting everyone to know that it all comes down to intensive teacher training (enforced by the state education department and requiring every K-3 teacher and principal to take a 55-hour training in the the Science of Reading); early intervention for reading disabilities like dyslexia; mandatory summer school if you couldn’t read and wanted to be promoted; literacy coaches trained by the state and deployed to all schools; and a robust high-dosage tutoring program with stakeholder buy-in.

Maybe Newark has this all planned: its 2020-2030 Strategic Plan glances at raising expectations for students and their teachers and “cradle to college” support. During last week’s board meeting, members approved a $1.4 million contract to consultant Jamie Walner to (virtually) teach teachers in six schools (identified as particularly low-performing) how to teach reading and writing. Other schools can participate too.

But is that enough? Board member Crystal Williams doesn’t think so. “Where did this person work?,” she quizzed Leon. “What is their track record? Who do they have coming into our buildings and are they going to be working with the principals?”

Ms. Williams’ questions weren’t answered, so we’re happy to help: Jamie Walner is a social studies teacher in Cranford who was awarded Union County Teacher of the Year in 2020. Here’s an interview she did with NJEA. Maybe she has a consultancy side-business but I couldn’t find public records of her work.

In other news, the Board approved $46,000 in travel expenses for the month of September. About half of that—$22,000– will pay for eleven people, including four board members, to go to San Diego. As Superintendent Leon says, some things “are very real and are lived and will be lived.” And so it goes in Newark.