Research Guides: The Newark Experience: Newark Schools: The 1990s to the Present

The 1990s to the Present

"Teacher Development and Reform in an Inner City School,": Jean Anyon. Teachers College Record 96(1), 1994, 14-31. Rutgers-restricted Access.

"Inner City School Reform: Toward Useful Theory": Jean Anyon. Urban Education 30(1), April 1995, 56-70. Rutgers-restricted Access

"Race, Social Class, and Educational Reform in an Inner-City School": Jean Anyon. Teachers College Record 97(1), Fall 1995, 69-94. Rutgers-restricted Access.

Ghetto Schooling: A Political Economy of Urban Educational Reform: Jean Anyon. New York, Teachers College Press, 1997.; Looks at an effort at educational reform in Newark in the early 90s and traces how past economic and political decisions have shaped Newark city schools. An important work on urban educational policy. Available?

Black Mayors and School Politics: The Failure of Reform in Detroit, Gary, and Newark: Wilbur C. Rich. New York, Garland, 1996.; Analyzes the roles played by black mayors and black politicians in relation to school policies and attempted reforms in Detroit, Gary, and Newark. Finds that neither black nor white political power is sufficient to overcome the power of the "public school cartel" (administrators, school board members, professional educators, and teacher union leaders) which controls school policy-making in large city school districts. Available?

Other People's Schools: The Challenge of Building New Schools in New Jersey's Urban Districts: 2000-2010: Robert S. Daniel. (Ph.D Thesis) Rutgers University Newark, 2013.; "This dissertation captures the 10-year contemporary history of implementing the facilities element of New Jersey’s historic Abbott V decision. New Jersey’s Legislature and Governor took this Supreme Court decision and created legislation responding to multiple constituencies and lobbyists while shaping a school construction program to be deposited within a government agency for implementation. While not the largest in nominal dollar value, New Jersey’s program was possibly the widest in geographic scope and most detailed in ambition in the United States." Available?

Racial Segregation in New Jersey's Public Schools: Progressive Public Policy at a Crossroads Rutgers-restricted access: Nancy Ann Spiller. D.Litt. Thesis. Drew University, 2001.; "Explores the disjuncture between the segregated condition of the public school system and progressive public policy developed to correct that problem." Includes case studies of Newark, Englewood, Camden, and Montclair schools. Available?

New Jersey's Apartheid and Intensely Segregated Urban Schools: Powerful Evidence of an Inefficient and Unconstitutional State Education System: Paul Tractenberg, Gary Orfield and Greg Flaxman. Rutgers University-Newark. Institute on Education Law and Policy. October 2013.; A Report Jointly Prepared with the Civil Rights Project, UCLA. Looks at levels of school segregation in New Jersey's poor urban schools, including Newark.

Putting the Children First: The Changing Face of Newark's Public Schools: Edited by Jonathan G.Silin and Carol Lippman. New York, Teachers College Press, 2003.; Focuses on "Project New Beginnings," a collaborative project begun in 1996 between the Newark Public Schools and the Bank Street College of Education (NYC) aimed at restructuring early childhood education. Available?

"Changing a Failing Promotional Standard: A Close Look at the Newark Public Schools District's Hidden Social Promotion Policy": Molly Moynihan. Seton Hall Legislative Journal 33(2) June 2009, pp. 609-649.; "This Note examines whether the strategy of "promotion with intervention" within the Newark Public Schools District violates the Education Clause of the New Jersey Constitution, a state constitutional mandate to provide all children with a "thorough and efficient" education." Rutgers-restricted Access

At the Front of the Bus: A Community Based Perspective of the Community, Issues, and Organizing Efforts to Improve Public Schooling in Newark, New JerseyRutgers-restricted access: Michelle Lauren Wells. Ph.D. Thesis, University of California, 2009.; "This study examined community organizing for educational equity—also called education organizing—in the northeastern city of Newark, New Jersey. It focused on understanding, from the perspective of those involved, both the goals that community members, community organizers, and education advocates sought to achieve and the processes and practices that they used to represent community interests and establish community leadership. " Available?

Measuring the Effectiveness of an Alternative Education Collaborative in Improving Student Outcomes in Newark, New Jersey: Soribel Genao. Thesis (Ph.D), Rutgers University, 2010.; "Compares the relative efficacy of alternative education placements in two Newark-based initiatives and evaluates the collaborative process among stakeholders in these initiatives." Available?

The Politics of School Reform: A Broader and Bolder Approach for Newark: Pedro A. Noguera and Lauren Wells. Berkeley Review of Education 2(1), 2011.; As a contrast to the decontextualized approach to school improvement that has characterized national reforms, a new strategy to school improvement that is underway in Newark, New Jersey is presented as an alternative model...based on the premise that educational reforms must be designed to counter and mitigate the effects of social and economic conditions in the local environment.

Jersey-Style Neoliberalism: Governor Christopher Christie, Crony Capitalism, and the Politics of K-12 Education: Jason P. Murphy; Atiya S. Strothers; and Catherine A. Lugg. Peabody Journal of Education 92(1), January 2017, pp. 115-126.; "We focus on one urban center, Newark, as an illustrative case study of how New Jersey's brand of neoliberal politics has shaped the political agency of those who live in the communities NJ's public schools serve. " Rutgers-restricted Access

What Enables Communities to Resist Neoliberal Education Reforms? Lessons from Newark and Camden, New Jersey: Stephen Danley and Julia Sass Rubin. Journal of Urban Affairs 42(4), May 2020, 663-684; "Our analysis of these 2 cities provides additional evidence for the hypothesis that access to social and economic capital and to information makes sustained resistance possible. We also identify a third variable, extreme political control as manifested through political machines, that intersects with the other variables to limit the sustainability of resistance movements in the presence of undemocratic governance mechanisms." Rutgers-restricted Access

"Measuring the Effectiveness of an Alternative Education Collaboration: Newark, New Jersey": Soribel Genao. International Journal of Educational Management 28(4), 2014, pp. 432-450.; " Utilizing a quantitative approach, this research compares the efficacy of a newly developed collaborative alternative education program to existing programs in New Jersey's Newark Public Schools during 2008-2009." Rutgers-restricted Access

Resident Perceptions of Public Education in Newark: A Community Survey: Alan Sadovnik et al. New York University Metropolitan Center for Urban Education and Rutgers University-Newark Newark Schools Research Collaborative. 2011.

The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools?: Dale Russakoff. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015.; Mark Zuckerberg gave $100 million to "fix" Newark schools. Why it didn't work. Available?

School District Reform in Newark: Within- and Between-School Changes in Achievement Growth: Mark J. Chin et al. NBER Working Paper No. 23922. October 2017.; "In 2011-12, Newark launched a set of educational reforms supported by a gift from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan. Using data from 2009 through 2016, we evaluate the change in Newark students’ achievement growth relative to similar students and schools elsewhere in New Jersey."

Falling Forward: The Governance of School Reform, Race, and the Contest for a Dignified Future in Newark, N.J.: Claire Cahen. (Ph. D. Thesis), City University of New York, 2022.; "Using in-person and online ethnographic methods, the research spans a period of intensified school reform in Newark, N.J., from 2008 to the present." NOTE: At the request of the author this thesis is not available to view until May 09 2024.

Moving Up: Progress in Newark's Schools from 2010 to 2017: Jesse Margolis. MarGrady Research, October 2017.

A New Baseline: Progress in Newark's Districk and Charter Schools from 2006 to 2018: Jesse Margolis and Eli Groves. MarGrady Research, June 2019.; "This study finds that Newark’s citywide test score performance, test score growth, and graduation rate have all increased during the period under study, with gains coming from both the city’s charter sector and traditional public schools."

School District Reform in Newark: Within- and Between-School Changes in Achievement Growth: Mark J. Chin et al. ILR Review 72(2), March 2019, pp. 323-354. Rutgers-restricted Access

Newark Enrolls: A Principled Approach to Public School Choice: MarGrady Research. April 2018.; "Newark Public Schools (NPS), in partnership with most of the city’s charter schools, developed a universal enrollment system during the 2013-14 school year to enroll students in schools for the 2014-15 school year. The system, known as Newark Enrolls, has been guided by seven principles: choice, access, community, equity, reliability, ease, and transparency"

Science Instruction in Newark Public Schools: Thomas B. Corcoran and Gail B. Gerry. New York, Columbia University Teachers College, Consortium for Policy Research in Education, CPRE Research Report # RR‐71, September 2011.

"The Oil Game: Generating Enthusiasm for Geosciences in Urban Youth in Newark, N.J.": Alexander E. Gates & Michael J. Kalczynski. Journal of Geoscience Education 64(1), February 2016, 17-23.; "A hands-on game based upon principles of oil accumulation and drilling was highly effective at generating enthusiasm toward the geosciences in urban youth from underrepresented minority groups in Newark, NJ. " Rutgers-restricted Access

The Factors Influencing Teachers' Decision to Integrate Current Technology Educational Tools in Urban Elementary Public Schools Rutgers-restricted access: Claudio Barbaran. Ed.D. Thesis, Saint Peter's University, 2014.; "The purpose of this study was to determine the strength of the relationships, if any, between teachers' demographics, use of current technological tools, attitudes, professional development, and rate and stage of technology adoption/integration...Five elementary urban public schools and 133 teachers in Newark, New Jersey, participated in the study. Their responses were used to determine the relationships between various factors and the rate and stage of technology adoption/integration."

New Jersey's Special Review Assessment (SRA): An Examination of the Post Secondary Outcomes of Newark High School Graduates 2003-2008: Andre Keeton, Alan R. Sadovnik, and Jeffrey Backstrand. Rutgers University, Newark, Institute on Education Law and Policy and the Newark Schools Research Collaborative. May 25, 2011.; "This report describes the post-secondary experiences of NPS high school students who graduated via either the New Jersey High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA) or the Special Review Assessment (SRA) route. The analyses presented in this report employ data from six cohorts of NPS high school graduates (2003 through 2008)."