The state school report cards were recently released, and while many school district administrators could justify or explain most negative findings in the report, Keyport could not.
Keyport Superintendent of Schools John Dumford said some of the information the state issued in the report cards regarding his district was inaccurate. He blamed it on problems the district had transmitting information to the state. As a result, the district’s SAT and High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA) information was incorrect.
Unfortunately, the mistakes resulted in the appearance that Keyport’s high school students underachieved on standardized tests.
The state report cards present the district’s students scoring at 66.7 percent proficiency on the language arts section of the HSPA and 43.9 percent proficient in mathematics. According to Dumford, the actual percentage of students proficient in the exam’s math section was 87 percent and 59 percent proficient in language arts.
If what Dumford said is true, more than 20 percentage points difference in math and 15 percent in language arts are huge discrepancies.
The report cards also present Keyport as a school district that does not have full Internet access for its students. Dumford said despite the report card only reporting 87.8 percent of the schools connected to the Internet, 100 percent is the true number.
The report cards also appear to downgrade the number of Keyport students who attend four-year colleges.
According to the report card, only 21.1 percent of Keyport’s high school students attend four-year colleges. Dumford said the number is actually 31 percent.
A spokesman for the state Department of Education said human errors are possible, but he went on to say that school districts most often make the mistakes when reporting.
It’s understandable with over 600 districts reporting to the DOE that mistakes can and will happen. It is unfortunate that the errors made the district and its students appear to underachieve. Hopefully, the district and state will be a little more careful when compiling the information that is used for the state report cards.