Executive Summary Report Qualitative Report Quantitative Report
The COVID-19 pandemic drastically disrupted K–12 education. School staff across the country were faced with the unprecedented task of delivering high-quality instruction amidst a global health crisis. In New Jersey, approximately 15% of K–12 public schools managed to improve proficiency rates in math and/or English language arts (ELA) on the New Jersey Student Learning Assessment from 2018–19 (pre-pandemic) to 2021–22 (post-pandemic).
Motivated by the evident resilience of these schools, the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) commissioned the New Jersey State Policy Lab at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, in partnership with the Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies at Rutgers University–Newark, to investigate the factors that may have led to such successes.
The quantitative research team utilized models to identify schools that demonstrated exceptional performance in student learning outcomes, particularly among underserved student groups. This resulted in the identification of approximately 700 schools from which 78 schools were blindly selected (i.e., without school names identified) using a stratified approach based on geographic location (across New Jersey’s 21 counties), school need level (high, moderate, and low need), and school type (elementary, middle, and high school).
Of the 78 schools quantitatively selected, 52 schools consented at both the district and school level to participate, and welcomed teams of interviewers to conduct group interviews of their staff in response to this fundamental question: When you think of impact, innovation, and replication, which practices at your school do you think of first?
The research team was particularly interested in learning about concrete steps towards implementation of those practices, relevant challenges to implementation and strategies for overcoming those challenges, effectiveness of those practices for specific student groups, and advice for schools attempting to engage in similar work.
Innovative and Promising Practices
The research team identified several practices across the sample that are “innovative” or “promising,” either because the educators labeled them as such, or because their descriptions struck the research team as relatively distinctive, exemplary, and of benefit to peer schools. This collection of practices addresses various topics:
- Accelerating instruction through math and ELA intervention programs designed to identify and remediate learning gaps.
- Supporting multilingual learners and students with disabilities through expanding access to curricula, employing strategic staff allocation, leveraging external partnerships, and fostering community within and beyond the school building.
- Partnering with parents to plan for and support their students’ ongoing success throughout the school year.
- De-privatizing teaching and administration through staff collaboration, teacher leadership, and professional development.
- Intentionally building relationships and implementing social-emotional supports that aim to promote a favorable learning environment for students and staff members.
- Centering equity and justice by bolstering initiatives that support historically underserved student groups and their families.
- Promoting college and career readiness by exposing students to postsecondary academic and professional pathways, maximizing public-private partnerships, and prioritizing dual enrollment and dual-credit opportunities.
As evaluated by metrics such as demographics, per pupil expenditures, and chronic absenteeism, Promising Practices schools are relatively similar to those across the state. However, their positive impact on test scores is almost half a standard deviation larger than the state average and slightly larger than that for historically underserved groups. Therefore, these schools can be considered positive outliers that demonstrate the possibilities of success under conditions that other schools have found difficult to navigate.
Given the added measure that Promising Practices schools demonstrated relative success over the course of the stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic, these schools offer at minimum inspiration, and perhaps even some relatively concrete pathways, that peer schools (and districts) may find useful in their own efforts to educate all of New Jersey’s students.
The variation in practices discussed in this report suggests that there is no single pathway toward ensuring student achievement. Instead, the themes embedded in this report suggest that recipes for success are likely to include some combination of emphasis on school culture (relationships, beliefs, and expectations), social-emotional learning, tiered supports, data-informed decision making, and attention to persistent achievement gaps. Additional ingredients likely to contribute to academic achievement include family and community engagement, integration of the arts and technology, development of student self-efficacy, and providing robust postsecondary pathways.
The insights shared by educators in this report lay the groundwork for initiatives and practices that schools across the state could replicate in efforts to advance student learning.