Last week the New Jersey Education Commissioner Kevin Dehmer, in his last decision for the Murphy Administration, announced the renewal of 22 public charter schools. Terrific news, and a welcome shift from previous years when then-Murphy appointee Lamont Repollet enacted a 2018 charter school moratorium, one pushed by NJEA, until he completed his shambolic “Charter School Review” that never saw daylight. In addition, Dehmer approved two expansions for highly-regarded charters in Newark, Robert Treat and North Star Academy, both of which will add about 800 seats during the next few years.  He denied an expansion of a third, TEAM Academy, part of the KIPP national public charter school network.

This is in spite of pressure from Newark Superintendent Roger Leon Newark to deny the expansions of all Newark charter schools despite intense parent demand (currently 5,900 students sit on wait lists) and support from Mayor Ras Baraka and the City Council. In his letter to the DOE Leon cites two different arguments: 1) fiscal impact on the district (i.e., less market share because fewer students means less revenue for the traditional district) and that charters looking for expansion do not “enroll a proportional share of multilingual learners and students with disabilities.” 

Given the very different demographics between Newark’s district school and charter schools, either Leon is being duplicitous or ignorant. I’m not sure which is worse. Any educator — or anyone who glances at the enrollment —would understand the reason for TEAM’s lower enrollment of multilingual students.

The state was clear that Leon is wrong: according to Chalkbeat,  TEAM “met standards in educating students with disabilities and multilingual learners.” The state database shows TEAM enrolls 14% of students with disabilities, higher than either of the two charters approved for expansion. The district enrolls 16% so that’s pretty close. 

It’s with multilingual learners where Leon’s accusation get skeezy.

Newark Public Schools district’s (NPS) enrollment, according to the DOE, is 33% Black and 59% Hispanic. Twenty-seven percent of students, mostly Hispanic, are multilingual learners, i.e., still learning English. 

At TEAM, only 4.4% are multilingual. Why?  Because 78% of students enrolled in TEAM are Black and only 16% are Hispanic. There are fewer multilingual learners because the vast majority of students come from English-speaking homes. (Side note: At TEAM 88% of students are economically disadvantaged but only 71% of NPS students are. Also, NPS has a history of anti-Black racism, a culture documented in a report that Leon refused to make public and may make Black parents leery of NPS. ) 

Now, it’s true that TEAM’s student proficiency levels are considerably lower than the two charters granted expansions, Robert Treat and North Star. At North Star, 62% of fourth graders read at grade level but only 43% at TEAM do. 

But that’s way  higher than students in district schools where  only 25% of fourth graders read at grade level. Add in NPS’s smaller percentage of low-income students and $4,000 more to spend per pupil per year and it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that students are better off at TEAM than at NPS.

Also there’s this: Black students at KIPP outperform Black students in wealthy neighboring districts like Montclair Public Schools and, compared to North Star and Robert Treat, it’s not even close.

In fact, if Newark Public Schools district were a charter, the state would shut it down. 

If TEAM were a Newark district school, it would win accolades. 

I don’t know how public charter schools will fare during the Sherrill Administration. Our new governor signaled that her approach to public school choice would be limited to the Interdistrict Public School Choice Program in order to foster integration. But she also made a point of pointing to Black and Latino families who overwhelmingly (80% Black, 71% Latino) support public charter schools, a higher rate than white parents. Will Sherrill be another Murphy on public school choice or will she be true to her inaugural promise to “shake up the status quo”? We’ll see.