New Jersey Children's Foundation

The New Jersey Children's Foundation (NJCF) was created in 2018 to accelerate progress for all students in Newark’s public education system and then share those learnings with the rest of the state and country. Our mission is to invest in people, programs, and partnerships that will improve city education systems by putting the interests of children first. Our vision is that each and every child will break down the walls of inequity through the creation of high-quality public education systems.   

Specifically, we aim to achieve:

• Accelerated Citywide Progress - Newark can be a national model for how we create systems of high-performing public schools, with great district and charter schools growing side-by-side to expand educational opportunity for all.
• Fact-Based Discussion About Education - The city needs a consistent, fact-based discussion about student outcomes in order to create the conditions necessary for accelerated progress—one that is unafraid to talk about both the successes and the challenges.
• Public Policy Wins - Education policy needs to better reflect a commitment to educational equity by solving problems facing large urban education systems that serve low-income students of color, and then helping students, teachers and parents increase access to high quality schools.

To realize this vision, we engage in three primary activities: 1) we fundraise and make grants to expand access to high quality schools and support efforts to advance for educational equity; 2) we publish policy, data, and research to promote a fact-based discussion about what’s working, what’s not, and identify potential solutions; 3) we support grassroots advocacy to increase the number of people involved in the discussion about public education.