New Jersey Public Schools

New Jersey Public Schools claim to have the highest graduation rate in the nation. In fact, in public schools in New Jersey:

• 11,000 to 15,000 students annually graduate based on an easy, almost non-flunkable alternate route graduation test (SRA), and they are included in the official totals. Omitting these students leaves New Jersey at only 24th in the nation, despite spending 32% more on education than the national average.
• the average minority high school graduate tests at a level four grades below a comparable white student.`
• one-third of the recipients of the New Jersey "STARS" scholarships, the cream of the crop, need remediation.
• a student can pass the fourth-grade reading assessment by answering only 42% of the questions correctly.