Southern, Barnegat Superintendents Frustrated By Report Cards

The state of New Jersey Department of Education recently issued its NJ Schools performance report, but local superintendents said that the reports do not paint the whole picture when it comes to their districts.

Interviewed by the Barnegat-Manahawkin Patch, Southern Regional Superintendent Craig Henry and Barnegat Superintendent Karen Wood both voiced frustration with the report cards.

According to the report, Southern Regional High School only met 20% of what the state defined as "college and career readiness" goals. But Henry noted that the algorithm used to determine that score only accounted for the number of students at Southern taking advanced placement classes - not those students who actually took college level courses at Kean University and other colleges and received credit for those classes last year. 

"We have over 200 students taking college level credit and many of the students are migrating over to that after they finish their AP classes, and when we told the Department of Education that, they said they used our AP numbers," Henry said. "If our students hit the ground running at junior year, they can leave here with their freshman college year completed and at a lot cheaper rate, so our AP numbers have dropped slightly ... their response to me was 'we'll take it into consideration' for [next year.]"

Asked about the report cards, Department of Education Spokeswoman Barbara Morgan told Patch: "These were created in collaboration with a large number of stakeholders, included the NJEA, principals, and school administrators, and parent teacher association members, who all worked together and decided what information to include, what information is important for schools to know, and community members to know ... but we've never said this is all set in stone ... the collaborative process will continue and gets better."

Henry admits that the academic achievement column of the report card for Southern Regional High School is marked "not applicable," and he said that was a coding error by someone on the Southern staff. However, he also said that the district took steps to remedy the problem before the report cards were issued, and yet the reports came out as incomplete.

"[The state] says it was a coding error made by us in August of 2011, yet everything they sent to us since then, gave us the accurate numbers. Then in January we noted that our target performances weren't posting, and we started an inquiry at the state," Henry said. "They assured us, 'this is a common problem with many of the schools, in so far as there was some confusion over this one coding check box, but they also said it could be corrected. Then, just before the report came out, they said 'sorry, we can't correct it.'"

Henry provided Patch with a hyperlink to the Department of Education's progress targets, which were updated in September, and "gave us comfort that the DoE database was accurate."

The number of Southern Regional middle school students taking algebra also is miscalculated in the state's report, because Southern called it "Mathematics 8 Honors instead of Algebra 1," Henry said.

The report scores schools statewide in three major categories: Academic achievement, College & Career Readiness and Graduation & Post-secondary, and compares the schools within each district to peer schools and their statewide counterparts, but Henry called the comparison groups "apples to watermelons." He said one of the schools that Southern was compared with was a school in Union County that had "400 students and 5% special education population. We have 2000 students and and an 18.5% special education population, I am finding it hard to see how that is a similar district."

According to a statement from the Department of Education, "The peer school methodology compares schools to approximately 30 similar peer schools from across the state with similar grade configurations and that are educating students with similar demographic characteristics such as free/reduced lunch eligibility, limited English proficiency or special education   program participation." A white paper on the comparison schools can be found here.

Wood expressed similar frustrations with the report card. She noted that according to the report, Barnegat High School met 100% of its academic achievement and graduation and post secondary goals, yet when it came to "college and career readiness" the state said the school met none of its targets.

"One of the measures that they look at under college and career readiness is students participating in the SAT and PSAT, but the fact is we have students that have never taken the PSAT, and now the state says we get measured on that," Wood said. "Now there's a heightened awareness of it and we're designing lessons around that. It's like saying, even though you didn't prepare for it, we're testing you on it. So it is a little frustrating, especially when you consider this is yet another thing [districts] have to do that are not being funded."

Wood said the district has planned a public meeting on the report cards, to review the results, on May 21 at 6:30 at the high school, and encourages township residents to attend.

"I am scratching my head over a lot of the things in the report, but our main focus now is  how to better position us going forward so this doesn't happen again," Henry said.

To view the state of New Jersey Department of Education's report, click here.