State Releases New Teacher Evaluations, How Did Woodbridge Schools Do?

By JASON KOESTENBLATT and MICHELLE SAHN (Patch Staff)

July 16, 2015

Under a new teacher and administrator evaluation system in the state of New Jersey, educators in the 2013-14 were graded on a scale of four measures.

Results were released by the state Wednesday.

In Woodbridge at least 44.9 percent of the district’s 1,082 teachers were deemed highly effective and at least 54.3 percent were ranked effective. Eight teachers were not included in the rankings.

Teachers in each school were ranked on a four-level scale, from ineffective, to partially ineffective, to effective, to highly effective as part of the new AchieveNJ evaluation system.

Because the disclosure of evaluation data of any particular employee is, by law, completely confidential, discrepancies in the overall numbers will be seen. The Department of Education calls this its suppression rate, meaning it won’t release the figures of specific categories of educators. From the DOE, regarding suppression:

1. Records that have n-size < 10 are suppressed, e.g., if 9 or fewer staff received a rating of Ineffective, the record will be suppressed (the record will not be part of the data file). The total will always be displayed irrespective of n-size.
2. When one performance level is suppressed due to n-size, and all 4 performance level ratings are present, the next lowest staff count will be suppressed (record will not be part of the file), to disallow roll-up to find the rating count for the first level suppressed and thus potentially identify educators.
3. Records with 100% staff in one performance level are suppressed, as per state law (since in this case, any viewer would know each educator’s evaluation rating). In such cases, only the total staff count record will be provided as part of the data file.”

For schools, the data showed:

• COLONIA HIGH SCHOOL Effective 62 Highly Effective 55 Total 119
• JOHN F. KENNEDY HIGH SCHOOL Effective 67 Highly Effective 41 Total 109
• AVENEL MIDDLE SCHOOL Effective 33 Highly Effective 30 Total 63
• WOODBRIDGE HIGH SCHOOL Effective 82 Highly Effective 45 Total 129
• COLONIA MIDDLE SCHOOL Effective 29 Highly Effective 32 Total 62
• FORDS MIDDLE SCHOOL Effective 48 Total 53
• ISELIN MIDDLE SCHOOL Effective 62 Total 66
• WOODBRIDGE MIDDLE SCHOOL Effective 22 Highly Effective 25 Total 47
• AVENEL STREET ELEMENTARY SCHOOL Effective 18 Total 26
• ROBERT MASCENICK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL Highly Effective 20 Total 21
• CLAREMONT AVENUE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL Highly Effective 20 Total 26
• FORD AVENUE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL Effective 10 Total 16
• MATTHEW JAGO ELEMENTARY SCHOOL Highly Effective 34 Total 41
• INDIANA AVENUE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL Highly Effective 31 Total 34
• KENNEDY PARK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL Highly Effective 24 Total 25
• LAFAYETTE ESTATES ELEMEMTARY SCHOOL Effective 10 Highly Effective 24 Total 34
• LYNN CREST ELEMENTARY SCHOOL Effective 21 Total 28
• MAWBEY STREET ELEMENTARY SCHOOL Effective 12 Highly Effective 12 Total 24
• MENLO PARK TERRACE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL Effective 18 Total 22
• OAK RIDGE HEIGHTS SCHOOL Effective 15 Total 19
• PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE SCHOOL Highly Effective 22 Total 23
• PORT READING SCHOOL Effective 13 Highly Effective 20 Total 33
• ROSS STREET ELEMENTARY SCHOOL Effective 16 Highly Effective 14 Total 30
• WOODBINE AVENUE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL Effective 31 Total 33
• District Total TEACHERS Effective 588 Highly Effective 486 Total 1082

A total of 24 building administrators – principals, assistant principals, vice principals – were evaluated in the school district, and 17 were ranked as highly effective. All data submitted to the state was self-reported, meaning evaluations were done by administrators and colleagues inside each school building.

The majority of teachers across the state evaluated well, the DOE reported, but there were still a percentage of teachers that would need further training or changes in their instruction techniques.

According to the report, some 2,900 teachers – providing instruction to more than 180,000 students that school year – across the state were considered ineffective or partially effective, the state noted. As a result of those ratings, AchieveNJ requires those teachers to receive extra support and demonstrate progress over time to earn or maintain tenure, the report said.

“The real story of the first year of AchieveNJ,” said Peter Shulman, Assistant Commissioner of Education and Chief Talent Officer in a press release, “is that educators have risen to the challenge of improving feedback for all teachers and leaders. While one year of this new data is insufficient for identifying sustained trends or making sweeping conclusions about the state’s teaching staff, we are proud of this significant improvement and the personalized support all educators are now receiving.”

See the rankings of every school in the state here.