School district to address
master plan improvements
BY SANDI CARPELLO
Staff Writer
RED BANK — With a road map in hand, the district is officially ready to tackle lagging standardized test scores and enhance student performance.
The borough’s Board of Education last week unanimously passed a resolution, vowing to bestow its "full commitment" to the district’s master plan for school improvement.
"It’s abundantly clear that the master plan needs to be in place so all of our children can do well," said district Superintendent Dr. John Krewer.
The carefully mapped out plan, developed by a 15-member master plan committee comprised of district teachers and administrators, is based on the research of Effective Schools Inc. — a New York-based nonprofit organization that believes all students are able to learn and succeed, regardless of economic stature, individual differences, or cultural backgrounds.
The More Effective Schools Process refutes the notion that a child’s academic success is based solely on family life or socioeconomic background. Research studies performed by the organization have indicated seven unique characteristics and processes common to schools where all children are learning — regardless of family background.
Those correlations include providing a safe and orderly environment for students, a clear school mission ("Quality Learning for All, Whatever It Takes"), high expectations for success, instructional leadership, frequent monitoring of students’ progress, opportunity to learn, community-school relations, and allocating a certain amount of class time toward instruction.
The More Effective Schools Process, which, according to the organization, has been successful in major urban cities including San Francisco and Detroit, and rural areas in upstate New York, is structured to be the key to increasing overall student performance and decreasing the amount of time in remedial classes at all subsequent levels.
Other specific goals include an annual increase in the percentage of students scoring above the 40th national percentile in reading and math on the state-required standardized tests and the implementation of student improvement teams in primary and middle schools. The primary function would be to assume leadership at the building level for development and implementation of school improvement plans.
Officials expect to see significant results in as little as three to five years.