A new report from the Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies and the Latino Action Network Foundation calls the academic progress of Latino students in New Jersey “deeply discouraging.” Before 2020, the analysts say,  achievement gaps between Latino students, who comprise more than a third of New Jersey public school enrollment, and white or Asian students, had been very slowly narrowing but pandemic school disruption rolled those hard-won gains back to levels not seen since 2012.

Currently Latino students, mostly from Puerto Rico and South America, represent 33% of New Jersey’s preK-12 enrollment, up from 24% ten years ago. In our public charter schools, 40% of students are Latino, up from 29% ten years ago. Most attend highly-segregated schools where 75% of more students are eligible for free/reduced lunch. In some districts, Latino students make up more than 90% of school enrollment: Union City, West New York, Passaic, Perth Amboy, New Brunswick, Guttenberg, Dover, and Fairview. (Latino Action Network has filed a lawsuit against the state because, says lead attorney Lawrence Lustberg,  “ New Jersey’s schools are deeply segregated by race and the state has a constitutional obligation to address this urgent problem.”) 

“The Latinx Experience in NJ Schools” tracks student learning through various assessments: the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP, considered the “gold standard” for tracking growth); NJ state assessments; and Strong Start, the interim test NJ used just after schools reopened. Researchers also look at high school graduation and postsecondary enrollment trends. The most reliable source for proficiency levels in reading and math is  NAEP because these tests have been used for decades while the other assessments are fairly new and lack base-line data. 

What does NAEP data show us? While NJ typically ranks highly when comparing state school systems— we’re #3 after Massachusetts and Connecticut— Latino fourth-graders’ math skills rank 11th in the U.S. while  eighth-graders rank 21st. “Based on NAEP data,” the researchers write, “NJ does better than most of the country, though sometimes not much better, and at no point is it near the top.” 

Outcomes for reading are not much better in NJ: seven states do better with Latino fourth-graders and 16 do better with Latino eighth-graders.

Here are other educational inequities for Latino students noted in the report:

• New Jersey Latino students have far less access to higher-level coursework. In the school year 2021-2022, only 22% of eleventh and twelfth-grade Latino students were taking AP or IB courses, compared to 35% statewide.

• Latino students are disproportionately classified for special education and are suspended at a slightly higher rate compared to their representation. 

• The percentage of Latino teachers is only 8%, although it is higher in districts with high numbers of Latino students.

• There is an “alarming” lack of counselors in districts with high numbers of Latino students. Currently the ratio in heavily Latino schools is 491 students per counselor compared to 339 students per counselor in other NJ districts.  (The American School Counselor Association recommends a ratio of 250 students to one counselor.)

Yet here’s a bright spot: the 85%  high school graduation rates for Latino students in NJ is consistent with the rest of the country, although lower than NJ white and Asian students. Postsecondary enrollment is also lower than NJ averages of 69%: In the 2021–2022 school year, 53% of Latino students were enrolled in a 2-year or 4-year institution. This may be partially explained by NJ Latino students’ enthusiasm for high school career and technical programs.

The report also looks at schools where Latino students beat the odds. The list is heavily weighted towards magnet schools (see page 47), which have selective admissions. This is not noted in the report. 

What are ways to bolster the academic success of New Jersey’s growing cohort of Latino students?  

Let’s look at several larger districts with high numbers of Latino students. In Union City, where 95% of enrollment is Latino, 57% of Latino students are proficient in reading, seven points above the state average. In Perth Amboy, where 94% of students are Hispanic, only 14% are proficient in math, 30 points below the state average. 

In Newark, our largest district,  Latino students have a reading proficiency rate of 30%, on par with the whole district (at 29%). But in Newark’s  Robert Treat Academy Charter School, 68% of Hispanic students are proficient in reading, 18 points above the state average.

What accounts for the disparities in Latino students’ achievement in these schools? Would it help to desegregate schools (as Latino Action Network proposes in its lawsuit)? 

Certainly, there are many arguments in favor of desegregating what Paul Trachtenberg calls New Jersey’s “apartheid districts.” But the degree of segregation in individual districts doesn’t seem to move the needle on student academic growth.

 Do we need to spend more money? Probably not: extra funding doesn’t appear to align with outcomes. Union City, where student growth is so robust there is a book about it, the annual cost per pupil is $22,575 (according to the Department of Education database). In Perth Amboy, where student proficiency levels are much worse, the annual cost per pupil is a whopping $38,954. Newark has $24,776 to spend per pupil but Latino students do far worse than peers at Robert Treat, which only has $18,008, half of what Perth Amboy has available.

(One can harken back to the 1990 Abbott II decision where Chief Justice Robert Wilentz wrote, “without educational reform, the money may accomplish nothing.”)

Does school culture disenfranchise Latino students, as Newark’s Peter Rosario suggests in one of the report’s prefaces?

Perhaps. 

Union City has been called an “outlier” by the researchers behind the Education Recovery Scorecard, which looks at the effects of Covid-19 on student achievement, because the district had the lowest learning loss in all of New Jersey despite  35% of students being non–English native speakers and 84% qualifying as low income. Last year the NJ DOE sent an email to the district, asking for its secret: “We have noticed that year–in and year-out, Union City School District has been experiencing exceptionally strong outcomes for some of our state’s most challenging students.”

It is not much of a secret: when schools closed, the district quickly provided students with laptops and high speed internet (plus other necessities like food) and started a high-dosage tutoring program run by district teachers that is still in action. But strong academic growth was already embedded in the city, with universal enrollment in preschools for three and four year-olds, a strong community, stable leadership (the superintendent, Silvia Abbato, has been there for ten years and administrator retention is double the state average), and a high number of Latino teachers: 48%, according to recent data. For reference, Newark teaching force is 22% Latino and in Perth Amboy it is 28%.

Another datapoint: In Newark district schools, according to the state database, there are 1.87 bullying incidents per 100 students. In Union City there are 0.33 bullying incidents per 100 students, far lower. 

How does New Jersey scale up culturally responsive teaching and what the Union City superintendent calls high academic expectations for all our students? 

That’s a question that will continue to haunt New Jersey educators, parents, and students. As State Board of Education member Arcelio Aponte notes in the preface to the report, “the success of our Latinx students, the largest non-White segment of the learning population, affects us all.”