Newark Public Schools Tried, Failed to Get Out of Improvement Plan

After failing to meet state standards for academic achievement, the Newark school district asked the state Department of Education to allow it to skip creating a corrective action plan, records obtained through the Open Public Records Act show.

The DOE considered Superintendent Roger Leon’s request, but ultimately ordered Newark to submit a “district improvement plan” that required the district to detail how it will improve academic performance.

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The district’s anemic academic performance was highlighted in the New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum (QSAC) monitoring and self-evaluation system for public school districts submitted annually to the state.

Newark’s report showed that they fell short in academic achievement. In the Spring 2023 state exams, only 29% of students could read on grade level, and 15% could do math on grade level.

In October 2023, Leon emailed then Acting Department of Education Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan to argue that the score that the DOE gave Newark schools for program and instruction “is inaccurate.” He went on for two pages to explain the various areas in which he thought the DOE should increase the district’s score, including asking the department to consider student test scores for a single grade rather than the typical span of 9 grade levels.

Two months later, the Department responded that it would increase its score in some areas, but not enough to get the district out of its requirement to produce a “district improvement plan to address all noncompliant areas” and gave the district until January 17, 2024, to produce that plan.

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The district ultimately produced such a plan, which was laid out on one page with modest goals for increasing academic achievement. For instance, the plan predicted an increase of four percentage points in the English language arts exam to 33% in 2024 from 29% in 2023. The math passing rate is supposed to increase by “at least 8 percentage points” to 23% from 15%, according to the plan.

A goal in the plan for chronic absenteeism is to “decrease by a minimum of a half a percentage point compared to 2023.” Last year, the Devils Youth Foundation reported a loftier goal, hoping to decrease chronic absenteeism in Newark Public Schools by 2 percent, using free hockey tickets as an incentive for school attendance.

“In a way, the state is sending a signal to the district that what they've been doing since 2020 until now may not be as effective,” said Dr. Kenneth Wong, professor of education policy at Brown University. Wong’s research focuses heavily on districts that have undergone state control at one time or another, as Newark was for over 20 years.

“This is a wakeup call for them to really start paying attention in terms of self-critically assessing whether the work that they've been doing should stay the course or should they really think about some major changes so that they will be able to get back on track, and continue to make sure that the District is under local control,” Wong continued.

“The Department reviews all proposed DIPs to ensure the districts address all areas identified in the evaluation. The Department typically follows up every six months after the initial findings until the district has accomplished an 80 percent rating or higher,” said the DOE in an email.

DOE continued, “The goal of this process is not to award or punish districts, but instead to ensure they maintain the quality of education and services to their communities.”

The district did not respond to requests via email to discuss the NJQSAC and its plans for the Department Improvement Plan via their spokesperson Nancy Deering.

The instructional section was one of the only areas where scoring was not in the district’s hands. In 2022, Chalkbeat Newark reported that the Superintendent instructed board members to give the district the highest points possible. At an October 2022 board meeting, he said the board’s responsibility is to say “we’ve met 100 points,” meaning the highest level of performance the district can reach in several categories.

“Our job is not to say, oh, it shouldn’t really be less than 100 points,” the superintendent said at the time. “That’s the state’s job. That’s the job of people who don’t want the district to demonstrate greatness.”

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