Education activists are expressing disappointment with a judge’s long-awaited ruling that found a racial imbalance in numerous New Jersey school districts, but not widespread segregation statewide.

Retired Supreme Court Justice Gary Stein, chairman of the New Jersey Coalition for Diverse and Inclusive Schools, which launched the , called Friday’s ruling “hard to understand.”

“It’s like saying to a patient, you have cancer in your lungs, but not the rest of your body, so we’re not going to do anything about it,” Stein told the New Jersey Monitor.

Mercer County Superior Court Judge Robert Lougy’s  agrees with the plaintiffs — a coalition of students, school districts, and organizations including the NAACP and Latino Action Network — that they “demonstrated marked and persistent racial imbalance” in schools across the state that the state has failed to remedy. But he also found that they “fail to prove the state’s entire education system is unconstitutionally segregated because of race or ethnicity.”

The plaintiffs sought to have Lougy rule before trial that the state was liable for school segregation. The defendants, which include the state Board of Education, asked him to dismiss the case. He largely declined both requests.

Larry Lustberg, attorney for Latino Action Network, said in a statement to the New Jersey Monitor that the matter might be set for trial, but it’s unclear what facts would be tried because the court rejected most of the state’s defenses.

He said there are four options: a trial, a settlement discussion, either party could file a motion for reconsideration, or either party could file a motion to have an appeal heard.

“We are trying to sort that through,” he said.

The state Attorney General’s Office, which argued the case on behalf of the defendants, said it is still reviewing the decision and declined to comment further.

The lawsuit hinges on the accusation that because of a state requirement mandating children attend the schools in towns where they live, schools in New Jersey are heavily segregated. The plaintiffs cite examples like Paterson, where the public schools are nearly 70% Latino and 20% Black, and West Milford, where students of color make up less than 15% of the school population.

In the 674 public school districts serving 1.3 million students, about 585,000 Black and Latino students attend public schools with student populations that are more than 75% non-white, the lawsuit says, citing 2017 data. More than half of those students attend schools that are more than 90% non-white.

Julie Borst is the executive director of Save Our Schools, a nonprofit school advocacy organization that was not involved in the lawsuit but supports its mission. She said she was disappointed but not surprised by Lougy’s opinion.

She argued that a trial could be good for the public to better understand this issue. Potential remedies to school segregation — like busing students to other districts or specialized magnet schools — are complicated, and could confuse parents, she said.

“Maybe this ends up being better because now it becomes more public. People will get to learn about it,” Borst said. “Maybe that hopefully spurs more discussion about what this looks like and what resources are really needed.”

Stein criticized the lengthy process it took to arrive at an opinion that does not plainly lay out what the next steps are. He called the delays “very difficult to understand.”

The case was first filed in 2018 following a  that alleged New Jersey’s public schools are among the most segregated in the nation. Oral arguments did not begin until March 2022, and the judge released his opinion 18 months later. New Jersey’s courts dealt with a backlog throughout the pandemic and continue to face a shortage of judges across the state, contributing to some delays in cases like this.

“I believe that the New Jersey Judiciary has to move much more quickly than it has been on this very, very significant issue for our state’s African American and Latino students,” he said. “Some of the students in this case have graduated from high school and moved on.”

And now that this may go to trial, it could drag on for months or years. Borst worries about what this means for another generation of students attending segregated schools. She doesn’t think the state will seek out a solution or overhaul school residency requirements without an order from a judge.

“I feel like we’re in the status quo. They’ve been safe and very comfortable not doing anything for all this time, so I can’t imagine that this decision is going to move the needle on that at all,” she said.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Jersey Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Terrence McDonald for questions: info@newjerseymonitor.com. Follow New Jersey Monitor on and .

UPchieve, an ed tech nonprofit, is bringing on volunteer tutors to offer free, on-demand academic and college application support to any U.S. middle or high school student attending a Title I school or living in a low-income neighborhood.

The platform is a game changer for students of color living in poverty, disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and unable to access costly individualized tutoring. Often working jobs or tending to family responsibilities, many are prevented from utilizing traditional offerings afterschool.

Through a mobile app or website, students are matched with one of 20,000 trained, volunteer tutors worldwide within five minutes. Sessions are typically 40 minutes, but can extend beyond an hour until students feel confident with the task at hand. 

“Right now in the United States, that sort of extra support is not available to the majority of low-income students,” said founder Aly Murray. “That’s where we come in. We think that every student, regardless of their family’s income, should be able to get support with their classes and applying to college when they need it.” 

Murray, who grew up low-income to an immigrant single mother, launched UPchieve in 2017 looking to build the platform she wished she had as a child. Of the more than 37,000 students who have completed over 100,000 sessions since, 64% are first-generation college-bound and 81% are students of color.

More than half are not enrolled in any other academic or college access program, and many start programming with very low motivation or in the lower third percentiles in terms of academic performance — sometimes grade levels behind. 

“We’re reaching kids — and this is exactly what we wanted,” Murray added. “UPchieve is especially valuable and high impact in cases where kids have nothing else,” especially those whose college and career trajectory could be changed by this level of support.

That was the case for Michael Lyons, a rising 11th grader who works at a Bloomington, Illinois grocery store three days a week and usually starts schoolwork at about 10 p.m. Having used the platform since finding it in an internet search for writing help in 7th grade, Lyons now has dreams of becoming an elementary school teacher. 

“I need help on demand,” Lyons said. â€śI think of [UPchieve] as a teacher away from school … I could participate more, because I know what I’m doing.” 

After just nine sessions, students scored an average of nine percentile points higher on the national Star math assessment, gains equivalent to 8 months of additional learning, according to policy research firm Mathematica, which studied 9th and 10th graders in the 2021-22 school year. Students also showed increased academic motivation, confidence, and engagement in class. 

Mathematica’s report was the first to show the effectiveness of on-demand tutoring — findings “useful for the field of math tutoring because they are examples of preliminary evidence that on-demand, online tutoring drawing on unpaid, volunteer tutors improves math achievement and motivation.”

Math, particularly algebra and geometry, is UPchieve’s most commonly requested subject, accounting for about 56% of 2022’s sessions, followed by humanities and writing support at 22%, science at 17% and college prep at 5%. 

Because the model draws on volunteer labor, the operational cost to provide one student with a year’s worth of unlimited tutoring is only $5. In comparison, other tutoring programs with similar impact can cost thousands per student. 

UPchieve’s international tutor base ranges from college students and retired teachers to business professionals looking to make an impact. The majority have prior tutor experience, but all have to complete an introductory training to learn best practices and demonstrate content mastery. 

David Seides, director of finance and customer experience at AT&T, began volunteering nearly three years ago, encouraged to put some hours in as a corporate sponsor. To date, he’s logged over 400 sessions. 

He sets the times he is available each week, and gets alerts when students request help. When he has an extra hour, Seides pops online to see if there’s any students waiting. The setup is ideal, he said, because his work schedule is unpredictable.

For students who are struggling in class but don’t want to let on to the teacher or their peers, UPchieve provides a level of needed distance, too.

“This online platform, it’s anonymous enough that I think we get people coming with the real problems that they can’t figure out how to solve,” Seides said. 

Confidence was a struggle for Stacy, a rising 11th grader from Ghana now in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her math grades pre-tutoring were in the 70s. Today, she regularly earns As and sees a future at one of the University of Massachusetts campuses. 

“I was surprised because I didn’t expect the tutors to help me so well. I started crying and screaming when I got it,” she told the nonprofit.

“They don’t just help me do [homework], but also make sure I understand,” Stacy said. “They also give me similar problems just like the ones on my homework or what I’m learning in school … My math teacher is really impressed with my grades and understanding in class now. I am very grateful for that.”

Like other programs, UPchieve is still working on how to get students to regularly return. While some students log on far above average, up to 400 hours in a single year, only about 12% of new students log 10 or more sessions — about 6 hours, the threshold for seeing large academic gains.

In comparison to the popular Khan Academy, UPchieve does seem to be striking a chord with students. Only about 7% of Khan’s new users complete two or more hours of sessions, according to a .

Adding an audio or video connection would be a welcome change, or being able to “favorite” past tutors, students told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ. 

The current text-based communication is preferred by most — especially because many use the platform late at night, or have slow or limited internet access. A predominantly text-based platform also streamlines student safety, Murray said, as chat logs are stored and reviewed, and filters in place prevent emails or social media accounts from being shared.

UPchieve does plan to develop voice capabilities, with safety measures, for students and tutors who both opt-in in future versions of the app, for times when a concept is particularly confusing. One of Seides student’s, for example, once had difficulty understanding which way to flip their paper to understand reflection and rotations on a quadrant plane.

Still, in its current iteration, the platform is filling a gap for students who need it most. 

“It has given me a support system in stressful times. Without the comfort of private tutors that my peers had, I knew I would have to work even harder,” Xin, a high school student in Queens, NY, told the nonprofit. “Having UPchieve meant that I wouldn’t have to work alone or live with the constant anxiety of falling behind.”

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Overdeck Family Foundation provide financial support to and ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ.