East Windsor Regional School District results on the Elementary School Proficiency Assessment saw a slight increase in 2001.
By: Michael Arges
Apparently Johnny can read better in the East Windsor Regional School district, according to the 2000-2001 scores on the state Elementary School Proficiency Assessment (ESPA) taken by the district’s fourth graders.
A lot of hard work by staff and some additions to the curriculum paid off in the strong showing by the district’s fourth graders on the test given in April, district leaders said.
District students showed improvement in all three test areas, with the strongest improvement coming in the language arts literacy test.
"I think those increases are not by accident," said Chief School Administrator Dr. David Witmer as the results were announced at Monday’s Board of Education meeting. "They are because of some deliberate efforts on the part of the staff and the curriculum and the principals who have worked very diligently with the staff."
In the 2001 test, 86.4 percent of district fourth graders passed the ESPA language arts section by scoring proficient or advanced proficient. That compares with a 56.1 percent passing rate on the April 2000 test. The proportion of students scoring advanced proficient went up from 2.7 percent in the 2000 test to 12.3 percent on the language arts portion of the 2001 test. The district’s students continued to stay slightly ahead of the overall state performance on language arts literacy, which went up from 1 percent to 10.5 percent scoring advanced proficient, and from 42 percent passing to 85.2 percent passing.
The language arts improvement was partly the result of a new language arts curriculum instituted in the district’s elementary schools for the 2000-2001 school year, Dr. Witmer suggested.
"I would not say that they went up just because we put in a new language arts textbook," he noted. "That plus many, many other things that the staff have done in their buildings with the administration have made a significant difference."
The language arts improvement was especially important because that had been a week area for district fourth-graders in previous years, Dr. Witmer explained.
"For some reason, in the past, our language arts scores were not very good they were embarrassing to us," Dr. Witmer said.
District students also showed significant improvement on the science portion on the ESPA, with the number scoring advanced proficient going up from 31.4 percent in 2000 to 44 percent in 2001. The proportion passing went up slightly from 95.4 percent to 96.8 percent.
This year district students scored better than the state’s students overall in science. State results improved from 32.4 percent advanced proficient to 41 percent, and from 89.3 percent passing to 90.4 percent passing.
The proportion of district students passing the math portion went up from 74.8 percent to 78.2 percent; the proportion scoring advanced proficient on math stayed the same at 20.6 percent. Math was the one area where the district lagged slightly behind the overall state average, which went up from 71.3 percent to 83.3 percent passing and from 21.4 percent advanced proficient to 24.6 percent.
Along with the overall improvement, district leaders were pleased that that scores among the district’s four elementary schools were more in line with each other than last year, when the Grace N. Rogers School lagged significantly behind the others especially in language arts. Scores in language arts at Rogers went up from 42.9 percent passing to 84 percent, and from 0 percent scoring advanced proficient to 12.3 percent.
Rogers fourth-graders went up from 57.1 percent passing math in 2000 to 73.3 percent, and from 1.3 percent scoring advanced proficient on math to 12.2 percent. The proportion passing science went up from 87.5 percent to 98.7 percent and from 29.2 percent scoring advanced proficient to 38.7 percent.
"They had an amazing improvement in scores," Dr. Witmer said Monday about the Rogers results.
Dr. Suzanne Harkness, the district’s coordinator of evaluation, cautioned that differences in the test from year to year make it difficult to use the test to make precise comparisons. Another complicating factor is that the student group taking the ESPA changes year to year.
"The fourth graders this year are not the same group as the fourth grade last year," Dr. Harkness noted.
Almost all of the students that took the 2000 ESPA are in the sixth grade this year, and the students that took the 2001 ESPA are almost all in the fifth grade this year.

