NEWARK — Probably just an oversight.

Such things happen in the lives of busy celebrities. But, the other day, when Oprah Winfrey was interviewing Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem’s Children Zone and touting him as a “superman” of reform, she forgot to mention his efforts were recently cited by the Schott Foundation for Public Education as one example of urban school success.

Of course, if she noted Schott's praise for Canada, Winfrey probably would have had to mention the other example of success described by the foundation:

New Jersey. Not just New Jersey — but Newark.

Yes, Oprah viewers, although she used the show to slam Newark’s educational record — with the help of Gov. Chris Christie, Mayor Cory Booker, and billionaire Californian Mark Zuckerberg — she could have just as easily used it to praise both Canada and this state and its largest city.

This is what the Schott Foundation reported days before Canada — the hero of the anti-public school movie “Waiting for Superman” — had to say about both his efforts and those of our state: “Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone proves that we can create community systems where all students have the supports needed to have a substantive opportunity to learn. New Jersey’s commitment to implement its Abbott plan and ensure equitable resources to all students proves that it can be done at the state level—as New Jersey is the only state with a significant black male population with a greater than 65 percent high school graduation rate.”

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The foundation report, entitled “Yes We Can,” then goes on to report that Newark — yes, Newark — had the highest graduation rate for black males of any major city in the country. Far better than that of Washington, D.C., a system headed by Michelle Rhee, whom Winfrey not so subtly suggested should become the next superintendent of Newark’s schools.

While all this Newark and New Jersey bashing went on, Canada remained silent. That was odd, too, considering he wrote the forward to “Yes We Can,” a report that, using federal school data, declared:

“The New Jersey graduation statistics show the progress in closing the achievement gap that can be made if black male students have an equal opportunity to learn. For example, the increased resources from Abbott vs. Burke funding in New Jersey, which became effective in 2003, have allowed the much-maligned Newark school district to nearly close the gap for Black males with national white male graduation rates. Unfortunately, states like New Jersey … are still the exceptions.”

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To give some numbers, nationally, white males had a 78 percent graduation rate in 2007-2008, compared with a 75 percent graduation rate for black males in Newark.

While Winfrey’s show was chock-filled with reasons to believe Newark and New Jersey are school wastelands, the Schott Foundation report — hardly mentioned anywhere — says things like, “New Jersey’s Abbott districts invest in their children by providing them with increased hours of education each day, on weekends, and in the summer. They also invest in continuous professional development for teachers and other staff and, crucially, in 0-4 preschool preparation for learning to learn."

Christie, of course, refers to urban education in New Jersey as “obscene." So, it’s little surprise he didn’t cite the Schott report, or other indicia of success. That wouldn’t fit the narrative he is trying to make us all believe, a narrative that somehow justifies cutting back on the very programs that were succeeding and replacing them with the sort of things in Washington, DC, that were not succeeding but do meet an ideological test.

The governor’s office declined to respond to the conclusions of the Schott Foundation report.

"No one is saying we have been completely successful in urban schools," says David Sciarra, the director of the Education Law Center. Christie accused Sciarra of suing the state’s schools “into failure” and said he was “coming after him."

"But all of this takes time and we have been making progress. A lot of the things that Canada is doing in Harlem are what we're doing in New Jersey's urban districts."

That's what the Schott Foundation reported, just before Oprah's big splash.

But no one noticed. Certainly not Oprah. Or the governor. Or even Newark’s mayor.