Truly Uncommon in Newark…
A while back I wrote a post explaining why I felt that while Robert Treat Academy Charter School in Newark is a fine school, it’s hardly a replicable model for large scale reform in Newark, or elsewhere. I have continued over time to write about the extent to which Newark Charter schools in particular have engaged in a relatively extreme pattern of cream skimming. The same is true in Jersey City and Hoboken, but not so in Trenton. But, Trenton also offers us fewer examples of those high-flying charters that we are supposed to view as models for the future of NJ education. When I wrote my earlier post on Treat, I somehow completely bypassed North Star Academy, which I would now argue is even that much less replicable than Robert Treat. That’s not to say that North Star Academy is not a highly successful school for the students that it serves… or at least for those who actually stay there over time. But rather that Star of the North is yet another example of why the “best” New Jersey charter schools provide a very limited path forward for New Jersey urban school reform. Let’s take a look:
So, here’s where North Star fits in my 8th grade performance comparisons of beating the odds, based on thestatistical model I explain in previous posts:
In this figure (ab0ve), we see that North Star certainly beats the odds at 8th grade. Now, we can also already see that North Star has a much lower % free lunch than nearly any other school in Newark, limiting scalability right