Last week’s announcement that the Murphy Administration’s Education Department had approved 78% of charter expansion applications provoked giddy relief after the long drought: Until now, Murphy’s DOE exercised a stealth moratorium on growth for one of the best charter sectors in the country. More to come on the reasons why Murphy flipped his flop. Here, let’s look at the family-friendly decision in that fan-favorite, Asbury Park.

In 2017 at the end of the Christie Administration, the DOE approved a brand-new charter, College Achieve Greater Asbury Park Charter School (CAPS),  to serve students from pre-kindergarten through 9th grade. Students flourished, as they do in the network’s two other NJ locations in Paterson and Plainfield, and so CAPS applied for expansion through 12th grade.

In 2020, the DOE rejected the application. 

In 2021 the DOE rejected the application, citing the lack of recent testing data because the DOE had cancelled state tests. From the Asbury Park Press: “State officials have declined to comment on the College Achieve status and appeals. Gov. Phil Murphy was elected to office nearly four years ago with backing from the New Jersey Education Association, which opposes further expansion of charter schools.” And so, like students at top-ranked Trenton’s Early Achievers College Prep and Newark’s Philips Academy that top out at 9th grade, rising 10th-graders at CAPS were hurled back into the district with few other options.

Miraculously, this year logic prevailed and  the expansion was approved. What does that look like for families in Asbury Park?

It means that  550 kids, almost all Black, brown, and low-income, have a chance—if they get lucky enough to literally win the lottery—to go to a school where they’ll have academic success.

According to the (user-unfriendly) DOE database of last spring’s test scores, 7% of third-graders who attend Asbury Park district schools are proficient in reading and 7% are proficient in math. At CAPS, 38% of third-graders are proficient in reading and 34% are proficient in math. Among fifth-graders in the district, 7% are proficient in reading and 1% are in math. At CAPS, 64% of fifth-graders are proficient in reading and 7% are proficient in math.

Tapinto reports CAPS had the “third-largest gains in the state in English Language Arts [ELA] and improved in every grade level in reading, math and the written expression on the New Jersey Student Learning Assessment [NJSLA],” which puts it into the 100% percentile for growth in ELA, “meeting or exceeding proficiency by a staggering 37 points during the pandemic.” In math, CAPS students are in the 98th percentile for growth: “CAPS Asbury’s results make it the highest performing school in Asbury Park in ELA proficiency at five times the rate in ELA and four times the rate in math for traditional district schools in Asbury Park, which rank among the lowest in the state in ELA and math performance.”

One other data point: according to the 2022 Taxpayer’s Guide to Education Spending, Asbury Park spends $30,117 per student per year and CAPS spends $16,533 per student per year.

Money aside, where would you send your child?