A little over a year ago, “renaissance schools” were about to open in Camden, and by the sound of things you would’ve thought the sky was going to fall. According to the critics, “renaissance schools” were going to “destroy” public education and fail to serve the same high-need students as district schools.

So now that these new public schools -- a hybrid of district and charter schools --have served Camden students for a year, let’s take a look and see whom these schools served and how they did.

In year one, KIPP and Uncommon served kindergartners and Mastery served students in grades K-5. As of last spring, 99 percent of KIPP students, 97 percent of Camden Prep (Uncommon) students, and close to 97 percent of Mastery students qualified for free lunch.

Furthermore, according to annual reports that renaissance schools have to submit to the state, 16 percent of KIPP kindergarteners and 17 percent of Uncommon kindergartners were classified as needing special-education services, while Mastery’s rate of special-education classifications was 19 percent.

In addition, “renaissance schools” served English Language Learners (ELL) -- 5 percent of KIPP students and 10 percent of Mastery students were ELL. It is clear from the data that the “renaissance schools” did in fact serve Camden students with the greatest needs.

Now that we know whom “renaissance schools” served, let’s take a deeper dive into how those students did. Although “renaissance schools” do not yet have statewide assessment data, internal assessments, disclosed in annual reporting, highlight positive growth thus far and are worth mentioning.

For further details regarding the internal assessments of the Renaissance schools, visit the following link:  http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/15/11/08/op-ed-camden-s-renaissance-schools-one-year-later/