Trenton – Senate Education Chair M. Teresa Ruiz renewed calls for intensive summer learning programs following the Department of Education’s release of Interim Assessment Data underscoring the growing achievement gap. Senator Ruiz issued the following statement on the report:
“We have been sounding this alarm since last spring, we knew the pandemic would have a disproportionate impact on our most vulnerable students and the data released by the Department of Education once again shows that to be the case. This is a crisis, we must address this and we must address it now. The learning loss we have seen over this past year will continue to be compounded until there is a targeted approach to resolve it. We cannot afford to wait until September. If we are ever going to ameliorate the achievement gap, we need a summer and long-term learning acceleration plan to be implemented immediately.”