Cities

Newark Chapter 9: Progress from Peril to Promise But Will the Full Potential of Chartering Be Achieved? Taken then from a multi-decade perspective, the reform efforts in Newark can be characterized as nothing other than an unprecedented success in the city’s history of attempting to address what were long thought to be intractable problems within […]

Newark Chapter 8: Compelling Research Demonstrates Unprecedented Improvement as an Improved District Regains Local Control The first visit that Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson made to Alexander Street Elementary School, as she wrote at the Huffington Post in November of 2014 … … had a profound impact on her. I cried the first time I visited […]

Newark Chapter 7: Encouraging Data Emerges and Reformers Summon the Persistence Needed to Stay the Course Two years and a month after The Prize had determined that those pursuing education reform in Newark had been “schooled,” new research appeared … … providing evidence that for the first time in many generations, the students of Newark were being […]

Newark Chapter 6: Reforms are Met With Pushback and a New Book Rushes to Judgement Even before Cami Anderson was appointed Superintendent, it was clear that a big part of the overall strategy for improving Newark Public Schools would hinge on closing underperforming district schools and consolidating under-enrolled ones to create space for new charter […]

Newark Chapter 5: The Zuckerberg Gift It was an announcement like no other. Its origins were an unusual alliance across political divide featuring strange bedfellows with rapport strong enough to generate odd artifacts, including a parody video … … where the partners feigned … … deep mockery … … of one another’s hubristic tendencies. Added […]

Newark Chapter 4: Courageous New Leadership Comes to Newark Committed to Leveraging Success Nearly simultaneous to the charter school presence beginning to be felt across the educational landscape in Newark, a new presence across the political landscape began to be felt as well. In the spring of 1998, a time when Newark’s first charter schools […]

Newark Chapter 3: Phenomenal Early Charter Schools Redefine the Possible From the very first day that charter schools began to operate in Newark, it was clear to many that a completely new way of providing public education had arrived. In her book about the early history of the charter school movement in the United States […]

Newark Chapter 2: A Governor Seizes Upon a New Idea In New Jersey, lifelong educators and community activists played the leading role in educating policymakers about the potential that chartering had to catalyze unprecedented change within urban public schools. After traveling to Minnesota to learn from those who had passed the nation’s first charter school […]

Newark Chapter 1: The Tragedy that Preceded Chartering In January of 1975, Harpers Magazine ran an edition … … containing an article portraying Newark, New Jersey as “The Worst American City.” The article found that in 19 of 24 categories, Newark ranked among the five worst cities in the country. Among the problems cited in […]