New Jersey Department of Education, October 2001
In accord with New Jersey's charter school law, passed in 1995 and amended in 2000, Commissioner of Education Vito A. Gagliardi, Sr. has submitted an evaluation report to the governor, legislature and state board of education. It has two parts - the findings of KPMG auditors who visited charter schools statewide and interviewed parents, and the Commissioner's recommendations based on these findings and public hearings. The evaluation of New Jersey's charter schools - 54 at the time of the survey, down to 50 today, serving 10,000 kids - is generally positive. Charter parent, student and teacher satisfaction is high. That's because "charter schools, on average, have lower class sizes, lower student-faculty ratios, lower student mobility rates, longer school days and academic years, greater instructional time, and higher faculty attendance rates than their districts of residence." And charter students - the majority of them African-American and eligible for Title I - are making solid academic gains; in many cases the new schools are outperforming comparable district schools. New Jersey's charter program is not without its flaws, however, such as insufficient funding and fiscal mismanagement; the Commissioner's recommendations to fix them range from the red-tape variety (requiring all potential charter heads to participate in a leadership institute) to the truly beneficial (providing greater regulatory relief and state aid for facilities). The fastest way to learn more is to surf to http://www.state.nj.us/njded/chartsch/evaluation/. You can also request a hard copy or CD-ROM of the report from the New Jersey Department of Education's Office of Publications and Distribution Services at 609-984-0905.
