Tamer Center for Social Enterprise

By some measures the Newark, New Jersey educational reforms set in motion in the early 2010s were working: test scores were improving and graduation rates were rising. However, the issues underlying these data—such as whether charter schools had a positive or negative impact on public education as a whole, and whether Newark’s experience is relevant to other blighted public school systems—continued to be debated. This case summarizes the sometimes conflicting data that has emerged from Newark’s decade-long educational reform movement, and asks students to consider what the impact NPS’s strategy will be as it enters the 2020s.