The Prize (32 page)

TEACH FOR AMERICA:
$1 million to train teachers for positions in Newark district and charter schools

COMMUNITY GRANTS FROM THE FOUNDATION FOR NEWARK'S FUTURE:

• Start-up costs for four new district high schools: $2.1 million
  

• My Very Own Library: $3 million literacy initiative, giving books to 12,000 elementary school students to start home libraries and engaging parents to read with them
  

• Newark City of Learning Collaborative: $1.5 million to community initiative to double the number of Newark residents with college degrees in ten years
  

• After-school and extended-day programming: $1.2 million
  

• Early-childhood grants: $1 million
  

• Teacher Innovation Fund: $600,000 in grants of up to $10,000 each to classroom teachers for innovative projects with potential to be replicated
  

• BRICK
  and South Ward Children's Alliance: almost $500,000
  for home-grown school improvement effort linked with wraparound services for families
  

• Youth Leadership and Development: almost $1 million on three programs: College Summit, the Future Project, and the Center for Supportive Schools
  

• Support for local education foundations: $650,000 donated to a fund created by local philanthropies to pool and coordinate local support for education
  

Note:
The total of the philanthropic funds spent or committed as of January 2015 comes to less than $200 million because some funding decisions were still pending and smaller grants are not listed.

Source:
IRS Forms 990 filed by Foundation for Newark's Future (2011, 2012, 2013), FNF website, documents supplied by staff of Newark Public Schools

Appendix II

SPENDING PER PUPIL, 2014–2015

• Newark district schools: $19,650 (This amount represents remaining per-pupil sum after payments to charters and pre-K are subtracted; of the $19,650, an average of $9,604 per pupil reaches schools.)
  

• Newark charter schools: $16,400 (There is no available data on average amount reaching charter school classrooms. According to Newark's
  KIPP
  schools, $12,664 reaches its
  SPARK
  Academy elementary school.)
  

NEWARK POVERTY STATISTICS

• 71% of households headed by a single parent
  

• 42% of children live below poverty level (2010)
  

• $27,038 median income for families with children (2010)
  

NEW JERSEY POVERTY STATISTICS

• 30% of households headed by a single parent
  

• 14% of children live below poverty level (2010)
  

• $83,208 median income for families with children (2010)
  

Sources:
Newark Public Schools, Newark Board of Education, New Jersey Charter Schools Association, Parthenon Group,
KIPP
schools,
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2014301
.

I researched this book primarily through interviews and firsthand observations. The notes below refer only to information on Newark and education that I researched in books, journals, newspapers, state and school district records, and online.

1. The Pact

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Christie had made urban schools:
David Halbfinger,
“
Christie Aims at Democrats Unhappy with Poor Schools,” June 18, 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/nyregion/19choice.html
.

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“We're paying caviar prices”:
John Mooney, “Spotlight Video: Isaac,” February 11, 2011, town hall meeting in Union City, New Jersey. Christie was responding to a mother named Yvonne Moore, who said her son couldn't get services for his disability in Newark schools.
http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/11/0210/2248
.

[>]
 
Only 12.5 percent:
United States Census Bureau, “State and County Quick Facts” for Newark, New Jersey.
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/34/3451000.html
.

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Newark was an extreme example:
Newark Public Schools, “School Snapshot
for Families.” See, for example,
http://www.nps.k12.nj.us/wp-content/up loads/mdocs/FamilySnapshot_K8_ThirteenthAvenue.pdf
.

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Forty-four percent of city children:
Advocates for Children of New Jersey, “2012–2013 Newark Kids Count: A City Profile of Child Well-Being,” pp. 26, 29, 40.
http://acnj.org/downloads/2013_02_01_NewarkReport.pdf
.

[>]
 
Henry Ford created the Ford English School:
“Ford Motor Company Sociological Department and English School.”
www.thehenryford.org/research/englishSchool.aspx
.

[>]
 
“If an unfriendly foreign power”: A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform
is the full title of the 1983 report of President Ronald Reagan's National Commission on Excellence.

[>]
 
Beginning in 2000:
Foundation Stats: The Foundation Center's Statistical Information Service, “Top 50 Foundation Awarding Grants for Elementary and Secondary Education, Circa 1998, 2000, and 2006.”
foundationcenter.org/findfunders/statistics
.

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the fastest and most tumultuous turnover:
Robert Curvin, “The Persistent Minority: The Black Political Experience in Newark,” PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1975, p. 13.

[>]
 
Newark cleared more slums:
The displacement of Newark residents is discussed in
Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968), also known as the Kerner Report, p. 142;
Curvin, “The Persistent Minority”; and Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD,
Root Shock
(New York: Ballantine Books, 2004), pp. 52–70.

[>]
 
“Good houses make good citizens”:
Brad R. Tuttle,
How Newark Became Newark: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of an American City
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rivergate Books, 2009), p. 127.

[>]
 
A state investigation later found:
“Report for Action,” Governor's Select Commission on Civil Disorders, State of New Jersey, February 1968, p. 55.

[>]
 
“one of the most volatile”:
Quoted in Curvin, “The Persistent Minority,” p. 15.

[>]
 
“In schools with high Negro enrollments”:
United States Commission on Civil Rights, Hearings Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights, Newark, New Jersey, September 11–12, 1962 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963), p. 403.
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012165851;view=1up;seq=425
.

[>]
 
Former U.S. representative Hugh Addonizio:
Jean Anyon,
Ghetto Schooling: A Political Economy of Urban Educational Reform
(New York: Teachers College Press, 1997), p. 107.

[>]
 
Newark exploded in six days:
Accounts of the riots were taken from “Report for Action,” pp. 30–38; and Robert Curvin,
Inside Newark
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014), pp. 100–127.

[>]
 
Its report stated, of urban renewal:
“Report for Action,” p. 55, 82.

[>]
 
“I think somewhere along the line”:
Ibid., p. 75.

[>]
 
In the early 1980s:
Curvin,
Inside Newark
, pp. 280–82.

2. Seduction in Sun Valley

[>]
 
“Mark is following up”:
The emails sent by Sheryl Sandberg and Bari Mattes were obtained in an open-records lawsuit by the ACLU of New Jersey.

3. The View from Avon Avenue

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Nearly half of the children:
The data is taken from Table 10 and explanatory notes on page 27 of
Barriers to Upward Mobility: A Spatial Analysis of Newark and the Challenges to Human Development
, a report by the Cornwall Center of Rutgers University.
https://www.cornwall.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/files/Assesments/barriers_to_upward_mobility.pdf
.

[>]
 
“A generous description”:
“Rescuing Avon Avenue School,”
http://www .thechadschoolfoundation.org/avon-report2011.pdf
.

[>]
 
“an inability to captivate student interest”:
This assessment comes from Avon Avenue School's April 29, 2010, application for a federal School Improvement Grant, under a section titled “Curriculum and Quality of Instruction,” pp. 8, 9.

[>]
 
In a series of rulings:
For a history of the
Abbott v. Burke
litigation, see
http://www.edlawcenter.org/cases/abbott-v-burke/abbott-history.html
.

[>]
 
Research had shown that children:
B. Hart and T. R. Risley,
Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young American Children.
(Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing, 1995), p. 132. Follow-up studies have found that these different experiences had lasting impacts on children's performance in later years.

4. Engaging the Community

[>]
 
“Education reform is not about”:
Michael Lomax
, “Education Reform: What Adrian Fenty and Michelle Rhee Got Wrong,” September 21, 2010.
http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2010/09/what_dc_mayor_adrian_fenty_and_schools_chancellor_michelle_rhee_got_wrong_about_school_reform.html
.

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a study revealed that in the 2012–13 school year:
The Southern Education Foundation found that fifty-one percent of students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade in the 2012–13 school year were eligible for the federal program that provides free and reduced-price lunches.
http://www.southerneducation.org/getattachment/4ac62e27-5260-47a5-9d02-14896ec3a531/A-New-Majority-2015-Update-Low-Income-Students-Now.aspx
.