Hills' Academic Performance 'High', Valley's 'Average,' State Reports Show

Wayne Hills High School academic performance is high when compared to other high schools in the state and Wayne Valley’s about average, data from the Christie administration’s 2011-12 School Performance Reports shows.

Released Wednesday, the reports are a new version of the long-running School Reports Cards that have measured school performance on a variety of metrics since the 1990s.

The new reports use many of the same sources of data such as student achievement, graduation and dropout rates, demographics and class sizes, but they also match each school up with 30 peer schools from across the state. Schools are matched based on demographics, percentage of low-income students, percentage of special needs students and percentage of limited English-speaking students.

Once matched, schools are compared to their peers and with state targets.

Both Wayne high schools belong to the same peer group.

Students’ academic performance at Hills is "high" when compared against schools in the peer group while Valley’s students "lags" in comparison, the reports show.

Hills outperforms 79 percent of schools statewide and in the peer group. Valley outperforms 57 percent of schools statewide and only 26 percent of schools in the peer group.

Students at both schools, on average, scored higher on the SAT than the state’s target score of 1550: 59 percent of Hills students and 57 percent of Valley students scored higher than the target score. The peer group average was 57 percent.

Superintendent Ray Gonzalez said in a statement that the data contained in the reports “has been considered and acted upon in the current school year.” He noted that the district’s administrative team would continue to review the reports to “identify actionable items moving forward.”

“We are hopeful these reports will allow us to further examine instructional programs and curricular initiatives to improve and refine what we do in our schools,” Gonzalez said.