A First Study on Newark Reforms: In the fall of 2017, David Cantor reported on the first quantitative review of Newark’s reforms. Among the preliminary findings, students in both traditional and charter schools made larger gains in English in 2016 than in 2011; math gains were flat. Nearly two-thirds of the gains derived from more students moving to better schools — “enrollment shares following school effectiveness,” as Harvard’s Tom Kane put it — largely because their low-performing schools closed or they enrolled in a charter. (Twelve of 14 schools that closed ranked below the state’s average, driving students to more effective schools, while the charter population rose from 14 percent to 28 percent of the district.) You can read the full analysis of the 2017 findings right here.
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