Phil Murphy Stifles New Jersey’s Charter Schools

In his first term, the Democratic governor denied nearly two-thirds of requested expansions. 

By Jason Riley. Excerpts:

"North Star consistently ranks as the most popular charter-school network in Newark and repeatedly has earned top marks from the state Education Department on academic performance, fiscal management and other measures. Some 89% of North Star students take Advanced Placement exams, for example, versus only 41% of students statewide. The school achieves those results even though 85% of its students come from families that qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which is the case for only 33% of all students in New Jersey.

No matter. North Star’s request for additional seats was denied for a second straight year, and the 800 families on its wait list will have to make other plans. Philips Academy, which currently educates about 600 students in grades K-8 and is another top-tier school by the state’s reckoning, was told it could not add grades 9-12. That means eighth-grade families could be forced to attend neighborhood high schools known not only for their persistent academic underperformance but also for their high levels of violence. There’s a reason more than 1 in 3 students in Newark attend a charter school.

The Murphy administration says charters have not exhausted their current capacity, but schools can’t wait until they are out of seats to expand any more than Costco can wait until the shelves are empty before it orders more food. These schools request additional seats based on projected demand. The governor’s objections are disingenuous at best. Under his Republican predecessor, Chris Christie, good charter schools grew to meet demand. During Mr. Murphy’s first term, he denied nearly two-thirds of requested charter expansions."

"A McKinsey & Co. study from December found that remote learning had significantly widened pre-pandemic black-white gaps in math. A New York Times report from last week said that “a cluster of new studies now show that about a third of children in the youngest grades are missing reading benchmarks, up significantly from before the pandemic.”

Mr. Bradford [Derrell Bradford, a veteran school-choice advocate who has worked in the Garden State] tells me that “Newark has some of the most-studied charter schools in the nation, and one of the things we know is that they are incredibly good at closing the achievement gap for low-income students of color.” For him, it’s personal. “I gave the commencement speech at North Star in 2018. The valedictorian went to Yale; the salutatorian went to Princeton—two black women. The one going to Princeton was studying particle physics. I’m offended by what the governor is doing.”"