The Star-Ledger Editorial Board originally published this commentary.

After more than a decade of sturdy improvements in Newark schools, we are now seeing a tragic reversal of that trend. Test scores have collapsed under Gov. Phil Murphy: More than 80 percent of district third graders can’t read on grade level.

At five district schools, just one third grader passed the state reading exam last Spring. At five other schools, just three third graders passed. Yet last week, the superintendent of Newark, Roger León, was bragging about how well the district is doing, living in a make-believe world.

By any objective measure, the progress that Newark’s schools are making is undeniably incredible,” he said through a spokeswoman.

Really? Overall, only 29% of Newark students can read on grade level and just 15% are doing math at grade level, according to state tests last Spring. In both reading and math, those scores went up just two percentage points over the previous year, and the third grade reading scores didn’t budge from 19% proficiency; there was no improvement.

“This is alarming, and it is a crisis,” Vivian Cox Fraser, the president & CEO of the Urban League of Essex County, told us last week. “And because it is a crisis, we need everybody engaged in it. We need an entire, community response.”

But León and other Newark school officials appear uninterested in holding the district accountable, and sadly, the Murphy administration is doing almost nothing to fix this, sending more and more money and hoping for the best. Instead of sending in the cavalry to rescue Newark’s kids, he is looking the other way, as his depleted Department of Education checks boxes and takes even these failing schools off the federalwatchlists.

In October, the superintendent instructed members of the school board to award the district the highest possible scores on the system for triggering state oversight, known as QSAC, and tried to wriggle out of improvements. “Our job is not to say, oh, it shouldn’t really be less than 100 points,” León maintained at a school board meeting. “That’s the state’s job. That’s the job of people who don’t want the district to demonstrate greatness.”

And the DOE emphasizes that even Newark schools with alarming test scores no longer meet the federal criteria for state oversight. Like Hawkins Street School, where just one out of 64 third graders passed the state reading exam last Spring; George Washington Carver, where just one out of 50 third graders passed, or Rafael Hernandez, where just three out of 40 third graders passed.

The federal criteria are deeply flawed, but that doesn’t handcuff the state. Murphy’s DOE could intervene in these schools on its own, but it’s not. In fact, critics say Murphy has underfunded the team that is charged with turning around failing schools, the Office of Comprehensive Support, shrinking it from 70 people to a tiny fraction of that.

Is this true? How many staffers does it have now? Neither the governor nor the DOE would answer that simple question, saying it’s a “personnel” issue. We’re still awaiting a response to these questions under the Open Public Records Act, but don’t count on it – that’s the transparency law that Murphy gutted last week, over an outcry from public watchdogs.

Yes, the governor’s budget has increased state aid to schools in Newark and other districts, but without accountability, what good will the money do?

This is a district that over an 8-month period sent staffers and school board members to countless sunny places like Palm Springs, Orlando, Puerto Rico, Last Vegas, New Orleans and Honolulu for conferences; in October, it sent 19 school officials to a luxury waterfront hotel in San Diego. It was also looking to spend more than $4 million to create a museum, while kids can’t read.

What we are witnessing is the sudden reversal of a significant and dramatic policy success in Newark under state control, which raised performance over more than a decade citywide. It expanded successful charters and opportunities for kids: In 2018, Black students in Newark were four times more likely to attend a school beating the state average than they were in 2006.

It boosted the district’s proficiency ranking too. When compared to other low-income cities and towns in New Jersey, the district’s average test score rank improved from the 36th percentile to the 64th in reading, and from the 33rd to the 50th in math – with most of those strides happening between 2014 and 2018.

And while the pandemic has been a hardship, it’s not an excuse. Newark’s academic decline started before the pandemic began. Its student performance fell deeper than many other districts. And its lagging recovery has been among the worst in the state, Harvard economist Thomas Kane and other researchers found – trailing other low-income cities like Camden, Elizabeth, Jersey City, and across the river, Philadelphia.

Philly kids are now almost back to where they were in math before the pandemic and a little above where they were in reading. The charter schools in Newark are also doing a much better job at catching kids up: In the 2022-2023 school year, their low-income students beat the state average in reading – outperforming their much wealthier peers.

Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz, a political ally of León, did not respond to our inquiry about the district’s performance. But León, who became superintendent in 2018, sent us a statement claiming that Newark is a “truly high performing” district, and that “other districts throughout New Jersey” are learning from Newark’s example.

The district has opened nine new schools, he said, student enrollment “has increased to an all-time high,” chronic absenteeism is “at an all-time low,” average daily attendance is “soaring,” graduation rates are “the highest in decades,” hundreds of high school students are earning associates degrees and college scholarships are “off the charts,” students are going to “prestigious colleges,” and student achievement across district schools is “the highest ever.”

Certainly, the district may have improved on some metrics. But the overall attitude here is one of denial. A 2% improvement in district reading and math scores over a year “is not incredible,” notes Fraser, who called this “underwhelming.”

“In your inquiries to multiple sources who have shared your questions with us, it is clear that you are trying to create a story where there is none,” León told us, going on to add: “The facts here speak for themselves.”

And, ultimately, they do. Can children in this district read? Can they do basic math? The numbers don’t lie. Newark is falling tragically short, and with the superintendent’s Trumpian mindset and the governor’s disengagement, why believe anything will change for these kids?