New State Report Evaluates Ramsey Schools' Performance

New Jersey’s annual school report cards are now a thing of the past. This Wednesday, the state Department of Education released the results of its new “School Performance Reports,” for every school in the state for the 2011-12 school year.

According to a release from Gov. Chris Christie's office, the new reports use some of the same metrics as the old Report Cards, but also add in some new components, like data meant to track college and career readiness, student growth, and comparisons to a “peer group” of 30 schools from across the state.

Schools are matched to their new “peers” based on demographics, percentage of low-income students, percentage of special needs students and percentage of limited English-speaking students.

The schools’ performance on a variety of metrics, including the NJ ASK exams, HSPA exams, SATs, graduation rates, class sizes and more are then compared to the other schools in the peer group, and to state standards.

The new School Performance Reports rated Ramsey High School’s student performance as “very high” when compared with both schools across the state, and those in its peer group. “Very high” is the best possible ranking on the new reports.

Smith received a “very high” rating when compared with the state, and “high” when compared to its peer schools.

Of all the schools in the district, Dater was given the lowest performance review, being ranked as “high” when compared to the rest of the state, and “about average” when compared with its peer group.

Both Tisdale and Hubbard received “very high” ratings in both categories.

Before the results were released, Ramsey Board of Education members spoke out against the new reports, saying some of the metrics were off and they included data that was unreliable.

Patch was not able to reach school officials, who are out of the office this week on Spring Break, for comments on the released data.

Check out all of the data collected on the Ramsey School District here, and continue to check Patch over the next week for more stories about the district’s School Performance Report.

Submit your questions or news tips to jessica.mazzola@patch.com. And, remember to sign up for Ramsey Patch's daily newsletter, and get updates on Facebook and Twitter.