And finally, some good news for New Jersey when it comes to education.

A newly released report shows that nine low income school districts in the state are performing above pre-pandemic achievement levels in math and reading.

This comes after New Jersey had among the biggest drops in math performance for low income students, according to researchers at Harvard and Stanford University's.

So what contributed to the improvement and how does that improvement compare to other districts?

For that and more, I'm joined by Hannah GROSS, our education and child welfare writer.

Hannah, thanks for being with me.

Thank you so much for having me.

So first, let's kind of break down what districts saw this improvement and in what subjects are we talking about?

One district to highlight is Union City, which the researchers out of the 11,000 districts they studied, they named it one of eight district success stories for how well it did in overcoming some of those pandemic gaps in both reading and math.

Some of the other low income districts that I spoke to were Beverly City, where they improved in math.

Also Englewood in Reading, Ventnor City, in Reading, and some other schools as well.

You know, Hanna, when we think about this improvement, how much are we talking about when we think back to that pre-pandemic level and then now?

So the research looked from 2019 to 2024, and the biggest improvement was probably about half a grade levels worth of knowledge.

Some of the smaller ones were maybe 2/10 or a third.

And what key factors did you find during your reporting that contributed to those performance levels increasing?

One of the biggest things, after speaking with superintendents and also the researchers who led this project was that academic catch up efforts helped, especially ones that were funded with some of the federal pandemic relief dollars, so that any extra instructional time, whether it's tutoring during the school day before or after school, adding in programing on Saturdays, or maybe doing a summer learning academy where there can be extra remediation and intervention efforts.

What other programs did we see that really aided with all of this improvement?

Because in addition to those types of programs, I also saw in that report there were there was tutoring.

There was summer school.

Can we kind of highlight those initiatives?

One thing is high impact tutoring, which is in New Jersey, we focus on third and fourth graders.

We had a state grant that particularly funded this, and it's small group tutoring with maybe three or four students.

Some districts, one that I spoke to, they had their own teachers be the tutors, so they know the students, they know what their needs are.

But many districts also partnered with outside tutoring companies as well.

So we know that this is good news and it seems that they are obviously up to speed.

But is there still more work that needs to be done?

Of course, there's more work that needs to be done.

I mean, this is nine districts.

There were another five or so districts that aren't low income that also are considered fully recovered by the researchers.

But that's still about 15 districts and there's almost 600 in New Jersey.

So there's still work to be done.

There's huge gaps separating students based on income of the community and their family and also based on race that need to be closed as well.

Okay.

So we know that the Trump administration is threatening to cut federal funding.

So how will these programs continue?

We know they're so improvement and that they work.

The federal pandemic relief funds have about dried up now, but there are other funding sources and the researchers recommend that for programs that are working, districts find other ways to pay for them.

So whether that's Title one funding, which help high poverty school districts paying for it that way or with money, that's part of the general fund coming from state or local taxes.

Well, Hannah, thank you so much for joining me.

And if you would like to hear more and read more of Hannah's reporting, you can head to NJ Spotlight News Talk.

Thank you so much.

Thanks.