Parents, Officials Grapple with New School Evaluations

Many parents have come to rely on the information about local schools posted annually in the Department of Education's Schools Report Cards, but a new system released this week takes the reports in a new direction.

The new report compares school performance in areas such as academic achievement, college and career readiness, and student growth. The report for Watchung Hills Regional High School shows the schools surpassing targets, and puts the school above average in its 32-school peer group. 

The reports for Warren elementary schools is more of a mixed bag—despite "very high" performance in many areas, the report says Central School is "significantly lagging" in student growth (measuring the change in median scores in NJASK tests from one year to the next) compared to peer schools.

In a letter sent to parents today, Superintendent Tami Crader noted the dichotomy of the report.

"High achieving districts across the state are struggling to understand the creation of their peer groups since many schools within those districts have scored well on the NJ-ASK but have received a low-growth rating," she noted. "Although we recognize that there are areas to address within the student growth category, we also know that our students’ overall academic performance on this test is very high."

Warren Middle School high to very high marks compared to the average New Jersey middle schools—but it's a solid "C" student among its peers. 

School officials reported some issues and concerns with the reports initially, beyond Dr. Crader's statement. Watchung Hills Regional Superintendent Frances Stromsland noted a number of data fields reported to the state' system for collecting the information—called NJ SMART—for the school were not included in the preliminary report (but she notes the information appears to have been corrected—see the video), and concern over the possible impact for problems is lead the Green Brook School District to look for someone to analyze the information to make sure it's correct and current.

"We will be posting for a full-time data analyst to ensure that our NJ SMART data that is submitted to the DOE is as accurate as possible, since it will impact our district on the new Performance Reports, as well as our teachers and principals when the new Student Growth Percentiles are included into their annual summative reviews," Green Brook Superintendent Richard Labbe said. 

Of course, there are other school ranking reports available—try Schooldigger.com's glitchy comparison and ranking of standardized test results for another look at how schools compare.