About this Blog

I will post material here on how much students in the public schools in Orange NJ--the inner suburb of Newark that I have lived in since 2019--show academic growth year to year.  Often, I will compare growth by students in Orange to growth by students in the neighboring school districts--South Orange/Maplewood, Montclair, East Orange, West Orange, Newark, and Glen Ridge.

Why am I starting this blog?   I believe it's important for people considering where to live and send their children to school to be aware of the facts on how much improvement children in my community of Orange and its neighbors show in their academic skills from year to year. I believe that negative stereotypes of Orange and other public school districts with large numbers of African-American and Hispanic students and small numbers of white and Asian-American students are powerful. I further believe that the availability of student growth data allows parents and others to see whether those stereotypes are true or unwarranted for Orange and other school districts.

About me.  Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s in a heavily white suburb, Chatham, I decided that I wanted to live in integrated communities as an adult.  After living with my wife Darcy and our son and daughter in the Ivy Hill neighborhood of Newark from 1987 to 1992, I moved to South Orange in 1992.  There, I became active in doing analyses of census data, conducting tests of racial steering by brokers, developing and rolling out a pro-integrative loan program, and advancing a variety of other pro-integrative initiatives as a member and officer in Friends and Neighbors, the Racial Balance Task Force, and the Community  Coalition on Race.   I later turned my focus on education, serving as a member of the South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education from 2006-2015 and as President in 2015.  In 2019, Darcy and I moved to Orange, where I've become interested in learning more about the school district and communicating facts about how well its students are learning to people in Orange, surrounding communities, and New York City, the major source of families moving from out of state to Orange and its neighbors.