In 2025, NJ Continued To Be One of the Biggest Losers of People and Wealth to Other States
May 14, 2026Gov. Sherrill is saying the right things about New Jersey’s public education system. Unlike former-Gov. Murphy, who unconditionally parroted the NJEA’s claim that our schools are the best in the nation, Sherrill has recognized that our school system is falling short in some important respects. Per NJ.com, Sherrill observed that New Jersey third-graders trailed Mississippi in reading despite our spending twice as much per student:
“Unfortunately, we are not seeing the schools keep up now with our great reputation in all cases. And I think that should shock everyone here,” she added, noting that New Jersey spends so much more than Mississippi on education. “Shocked me … that alone should tell us that something needs to change here.”
New study: New Jersey students lag in recovery from pandemic-related learning loss. Adding confirmation to Sherrill’s observation, NJEdReport provides an excellent summary of the most recent Education Scorecard from education researchers at Harvard and Stanford (here is New Jersey‘s scorecard). We recommend the entire NJEdReport piece because of Laura Waters’ deep knowledge of our education system and her ability to identify areas for improvement. The Education Scorecard measured student recovery from pandemic-related learning loss by looking at student academic growth from 2019 to 2025 and 2022 to 2025:
- New Jersey came in 20th out of 38 states for academic growth in math and 19th in reading from 2022 to 2025.* For the record, Mississippi ranked 7th for growth in both reading and math.
- Looking back to 2019, the average New Jersey student was .59 grade equivalents below their 2019 level in math (meaning they were more than have a grade behind) and .41 grade equivalents below in reading. In other words, New Jersey students had not recovered from pandemic-related learning loss by 2025.
New Jersey lags in demographically-adjusted student learning. This is consistent with the Urban Institute study that showed when adjusted for demographics — like-students are compared with like-students — New Jersey actually ranks 16th. Mississippi outranked New Jersey across the board for 3rd- and 8th-grade reading and math.
Memo to the Murphy and the NJEA: 19th, 20th, and 16th are not 1st.
New Jersey is not getting a bang for its education buck. As Sherrill observed, New Jersey spends twice as much per pupil as Mississippi: $27,000 versus $12,000 (per NJEdReport). Sherrill spokeswoman Maggie Garbarino stated: “… the governor has been clear: We are not getting the bang for our buck when it comes to education spending” (per NJ.com). That’s exactly right, as Sunlight has noted for years.
Sherrill wants more bang for the buck but the NJEA just wants more bucks. NJ.com shrewdly noted that Sherrill’s support for cost-saving district consolidation will inevitably run up against NJEA resistance and asked whether Sherrill was willing to take on the NJEA. The status-quo Murphy was not. As of now, Sherrill is saying all the right things.
*The average student was .17 grade equivalents ahead of 2022 and .14 below in reading.