Like many states, New Jersey is hiring tutors to help kids in struggling schools lift their math and reading scores. The strategy was successful in Louisiana and Mississippi, where once-floundering students rose to the nation’s top ranks from the bottom.
New Jersey’s latest grants round, though, has created a mystery: Why did Trenton, one of the poorest and most desperate districts of all, get nothing?
Credit: (NJ Office of Legislative Services)“If they’re not getting the necessary resources to these kids, you can’t expect for them to excel or to succeed in life,” said an alarmed Sen. Shirley Turner, who has represented Trenton for more than three decades. “We shouldn’t leave any child behind.”
Why is Trenton not getting the help? Was the district’s application faulty? Did the state conclude that the money would be better spent elsewhere, in districts with a record of getting stronger results with state aid?
Turner (D-Mercer) says the state Department of Education told her on Tuesday that Trenton received more than $700,000 for tutoring in 2024, and had to return nearly $550,000 of it. The reason, she says, was unclear to her.
“I don’t know why they weren’t able to utilize all that money,” she said. “And maybe they held that against them, because they didn’t use the money in 2024.”
The assistant superintendent who authored the district’s latest grant proposal didn’t know why it was rejected, and expected the state to reach out regarding any deficiencies, Turner said. Instead, she said, that administrator “heard crickets.”
The superintendent, James Earle, declined to discuss why Trenton’s application was rejected. The school board president, Gerald Truehardt, told NJ Spotlight News that the district “applied for the high-impact tutoring grant but we were not selected this year.” He declined to answer further questions on Tuesday.
Advocates alarmed
Local districts were rated on factors like “program design, alignment to evidence-based practices, readiness to implement, and the extent to which the proposed work would support the program’s goals,” according to a Department of Education representative. Missing those components would make a score too low to qualify. The representative declined to answer questions about Trenton’s funding.
Whatever the reason, the lack of funding for Trenton is causing concern among education reformers familiar with the success in Louisiana and Mississippi. Intensive, small-group tutoring is a gold standard in many education circles. Schools can reverse low proficiency by pairing students with consistent tutors at least three times a week for extra help, aligned with classroom lessons.
Trenton did not get the latest funding despite a glaring, well-documented need: While the district spends more than $24,000 per pupil, only 8% of third graders read at grade level and just 12% are proficient in math. Those scores have barely budged in recent years.
Trenton, the state capital, is at the bottom of New Jersey’s 31 poorest school districts, where Camden once languished.
The Education Department says it may expand the grant opportunities: Nearly 100 more school districts could soon gain access to high-quality help under a proposal by Gov. Mikie Sherrill to double the program’s annual budget to $15 million. That must be enacted by the Legislature and signed into law as part of the state budget by July 1.
About 26 of New Jersey’s 31 poorest districts have received tutoring grant money since 2023. Only about seven were awarded the funds in the third and latest round, announced this month, for use during the summer and the 2026-2027 school year.
Ex-mayor’s fundraising
The original $52 million for the first two cohorts of New Jersey’s tutoring initiative, in late 2023 and early 2024, came from a national influx of federal pandemic relief. The most recent round was funded with $7.5 million from the state, with different criteria: This time, the grants were restricted to schools with under 50% proficiency in reading or math.
It surprised some advocates that only a handful of the poorest districts were listed among the 47 traditional districts and eight charter schools that received the money. They included Asbury Park, Camden and Newark, though not Trenton, where more than a third of youngsters live in poverty.
“I’d like to find out why,” said Trenton’s former mayor, Douglas Palmer, who raises private money for an after-school literacy program for about 240 mostly second graders in the city. “Because these students need as much help as they can get.”
The next step for the district, Turner said, should be to “follow up and find out why you didn’t receive the grant.”
She said she would like “greater oversight” from the administration of Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat who took office in January, to ensure that tutoring money is going to where it is needed most.
Ready to go
The Department of Education should “reach out proactively to specific districts that are languishing in terms of their outcomes,” said Paula White of JerseyCAN, who was formerly in charge of the state’s school-improvement strategies. She calls high-quality tutoring “a game-changer” when partnered with strong baseline classroom instruction.
NJ Tutoring Corps CEO Katherine Bassett says the organization has staff and plans ready to scale its proven model. Sherrill’s proposed funding increase “has the potential to transform the lives of thousands of students across our state,” Bassett said.
The latest data from more than 1,600 students served by Bassett’s nonprofit last year showed significant gains: The percentage performing two or more grade levels behind dropped to 41% from 72% in math and to 43% from 67% in reading.
Tutoring demand is high statewide, says Tahina Perez, executive director of Teach For America New Jersey. That organization includes hundreds of alumni and roughly 115 active teachers across Newark, Paterson and Camden.
And tutoring has shown great success in other states. In Mississippi, the combination of intensive small-group tutoring and a phonics-based curriculum lifted the high-poverty state to the reading rankings national average from 49th. In Louisiana, fourth graders achieved the nation’s largest reading gains from 2019-2024, climbing to 16th place from 50th by scaling evidence-based tutoring alongside proven classroom materials.
With adjustments for demographics, both states now rank among the nation’s top-performing for fourth-grade reading.
High-quality tutoring should be a K-12 pillar, not just a post-pandemic fix, White argues. She cautions, though, that its effectiveness depends on connecting the necessary pieces, such as good instruction from the start. “Because to the extent that they don’t,” she said of districts, “then theoretically everybody will need tutoring.”
‘Dispiriting’ statistics
More than 1,100 second graders are enrolled in Trenton’s traditional public schools, reflecting a vast demand for early literacy intervention that local advocates say is barely being met. Existing community programs serve a tiny fraction of the students who need help.
Palmer’s after-school literacy program, for instance, is working to raise $15,000 to provide a four-day summer session for 40 of roughly 240 regular participants. Similarly, while the nonprofit Mercer Street Friends offers tutoring and wraparound support—bolstered by a $2 million state appropriation secured last year by Turner — its reach remains limited, serving 200-300 students for tutoring annually.
That costs several hundred thousand dollars across four schools, relying on retired teachers, and the summer literacy pilot will reach a sliver of the group, according to Mercer Street Friends CEO Bernie Flynn.
“The students in Trenton are desperate for this type of intervention because you look at the district-wide statistics, and they’re just dispiriting,” Flynn said. “We’re tackling that one student, one school at a time.”
He’s optimistic about Sherrill’s proposed funding boost, hoping her education commissioner, Lily Laux, will ensure that districts like Trenton secure the money needed for high-quality tutoring.
“We might have the best public school system in the country here in New Jersey by various measures, but we are failing our children in urban centers with regard to reading and math proficiency,” he said. “We have to do better.”
Turner, a former Trenton schoolteacher, agreed, stressing the importance of ongoing advocacy for these kids.
“Often if people don’t realize or if people aren’t paying attention,” she said, “things just wither and die on the vine.”
