District hopes in-housetests boost state scores

Teachers can use quarterly assessments

to find where students need extra help
By:Sally Goldenberg
   After reviewing results of the school district’s in-house quarterly assessment tests, teachers will be able to focus their lessons on the academic needs of the students in their classrooms.
   Although Manville recently scored its first quarterly assessment of the year, and provided the scores to teachers, Superintendent of Schools Donald Burkhardt declined to release the overall districtwide test results.
   The four assessments are intended to help teachers better prepare students for the state exams given at the end of the year.
   District Curriculum Specialist Barbara Popp said the math assessments were reinstated for kindergarten through eighth grade last year, and have been put back in place for math in the high school and language arts in all grades this year. The tests had been discontinued several years ago.
   The tests allow the teachers to pay individual attention to students’ needs throughout the year in an effort to improve scores and better teach curricula, said Weston Elementary School Principal Don Frank, who manages the quarterly assessments.
   Ms. Popp said the exams also help teachers pace the curricula throughout the year.
   "It’s going to help us keep pacing on our curriculum," she said. "We want to keep the pacing at a good point." Manville implemented a new math curriculum with corresponding textbooks over the last two years and a new language arts curriculum with more emphasis on literacy is underway, Ms. Popp said. The new curricula correspond with the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards, which the state Education Department has been revising.
   The new math curriculum focuses more on open-ended and critical thinking, highlighted by problems on state exams in which students must form their own questions.
   The new language arts curriculum emphasizes literacy, which compounds with state and federal initiatives to have all third-graders literate.
   As a result, Ms. Popp said, the three state exams given in grades four, eight and 11 have been modified. The assessments are intended to help teachers instruct students on the new materials and improve weak areas, she said.
   Teachers must track each problem on the quarterly assessments to better serve the needs of individual students, Mr. Frank said.
   "It can be a very powerful piece (of information) for a teacher," he said.