BY CHRISTINE VARNO
Staff Writer
Long Branch Middle School Long Branch schools are getting closer to meeting the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), and the middle school will meet those benchmarks by next year, the city’s top school official said last week.
“Last year we embarked on restructuring the whole middle school,” said Long Branch School Superintendent Joseph M. Ferraina. “We have seen great changes. We improved in areas this year and you will see us meet Adequate Yearly Progress [AYP]next year.”
The Long Branch schools superintendent acknowledged that the city’s middle school failed to meet the federal NCLB benchmarks for six consecutive years, but said the lower-than-average results are a passing grade in his book.
“When you look at AYP at the middle school, a couple of years back the middle school failed in a couple of areas,” said Ferraina last week. “But this year, it only failed in one area, special education. I am a strong supporter of [NCLB], but to take a special education child and put them through this test just doesn’t work.”
Long Branch High School Rich Vespucci, spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Education (DOE), said last week the middle school had failed to meet AYP in four categories in the 2005-2006 school year but was deficient in only one category for the current school year.
The state DOE released the results of its NCLB Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) report Aug. 22 and the Long Branch Middle School made the list as one of two Monmouth County schools designated for “restructuring” status.
Also, the grade 9 -12 Long Branch High School failed to meet AYP for its fourth consecutive year, and the grades 3 – 5 West End and Amerigo A. Anastasia schools failed for the second consecutive year, placing them on the DOE’s Early Warning List.
According to the DOE, the district restructuring plan for the middle school must emphasize “the importance of improving instruction by using strategies grounded in scientifically based research so that all children in the school achieve proficiency in the core academic subjects of reading and mathematics.”
Joseph Ferraina It requires the restructuring plan include one the following alternatives: 1. implement major restructuring of the school’s governance as outlined in NCLB; 2. reopen the school as a public charter school; 3. replace all, or most, of the school staff relevant to the school’s inability to make AYP.
Ferraina said on Thursday that the middle school restructured its school governance, which formerly consisted of a principal and three assistant principals. Now, the school is governed by three academy administrators along with a data administrator who tracks students’ progress in the different areas and reports results to the administrators.
Long Branch School Board member Avery Grant said last week that he has seen significant improvements within the city’s school district.
“We are very positive,” he said. “Give us another year and you will see progress. We have already seen progress, but again we are not happy with the [AYP] results. We are working on AYP.”
Michelle Critelli, president of the Long Branch Board of Education, concurred.
“Absolutely there’s been progress,” she said. “Over the past couple of years test scores have improved. We have a diverse population and every single student is included in AYP and the NCLB mandates and you have to look at the overall picture. The Board of Education is very happy with what we’re seeing in the schools.
“Part of the NCLB rules and regulations for a Title I school is that there should be a plan in place … to create some different programs,” she continued. “We started to do that because there is a lot of information and data out there about learning academies, small learning communities within a large school. The board endorsed that strategy. [The academies] provide additional focus and meet all curricular and core content standards,” said Critelli, administrator in the Monroe Township School District.
“Our hope is that it will help {the students}. It’s new and we will need to assess and evaluate. Each academy has an administrator and a counselor in addition [they are] continuing to build relationships between students and staff. That’s very important. Our hope is to create challenging and rigorous and relevant education so students can see the meaning behind what they’re doing.
“The board is very involved. We’re very aware of the situation. Right now we have the academies, administrators within the academies, and the restructuring of the high school. That’s a big undertaking. We’re looking forward to a great school year.”
The Long Branch School District consists of nine schools with a population of approximately 5,000 students. Of those, approximately 600 students are categorized as having special needs in different areas, according to Ferraina.
“I felt this year [the middle school] met AYP, even though special education did not meet it,” he said. “We want to bring special education students to their full potential to make them life-long learners.
“How is spending 300 hours preparing special-needs students for a test going to help them?” he added.
According to Vespucci, once a school fails to meet AYP six years in a row, the district must implement a DOE approved restructuring plan to increase student achievement.
“When a school fails to meet AYP for a fifth year, [the DOE] requires the school to come up with a plan on how they will restructure the school if it fails in the sixth year,” Vespucci said last week.
Ferraina said when the middle school failed to achieve AYP in its fifth year, the district developed a restructuring plan that included creating small learning communities within the school.
The district initiated the academy program which encompasses three programs: visual and performing arts, leadership and mathematics, science and technology.
Rather than waiting to see if the school achieved AYP in its sixth year, the middle school implemented the academy program in the 2005-2006 school year, Ferraina said.
The plan requires that in addition to a student’s general curriculum, each student be placed in one of the three programs.
According to Ferraina, the plan is working.
He said the academy program was implemented at the high school in the 2006-2007 school year and he has already seen positive changes academically and in the area of discipline.
In order to achieve AYP, students must meet both the proficiency targets and a 95 percent participation rate in the math and language arts assessment for each grade span at the school and for each of ten subgroups, which include: total grade population, students with disabilities, limited English proficient students, economically disadvantaged students and white, Hispanic, African American, Asian/Pacific Islander and American Indian/Native American students, according to a DOE press release.
There must be at least 20 students in each subgroup in order for that group ‘s results to be counted toward AYP results.
There are 40 indicators determined by DOE officials that are based on four primary categories. The categories are grouped into two areas; participation rate and performance by all students.
Those two groups are then applied to the 10 sub-groups that classify the students.
Ferraina pointed out that the Long Branch student body falls into most of the 40 indicator categories, unlike the school populations in neighboring towns.
“People may see that a school fails to meet AYP two or three years in a row, but what they don’t understand is that Long Branch may have 40 indicators when a surrounding district may only have 15 indicators,” Ferraina said. “If you fail in just one of the indicators, you fail to meet AYP.”
If a school misses achieving AYP in any one of the indicators, the school is placed on an “Early Warning” list. If a school fails to achieve AYP the next year, the school will be placed on a “In Need of Improvement” list, which requires the district to offer the school technical assistance to address the area that caused the school to be in need of improvement, according to the DOE Web site.
A third consecutive year of failing to meet AYP requirements, will keep the school on the “In Need of Improvement” list and the district must continue to offer intradistrict school choices and must also offer supplemental educational services to eligible students.
A school that does not make AYP for four consecutive years is identified as a school in need of “Corrective Action,” which requires the district to notify parents of the school’s status, revise its school improvement plan and receive technical assistance from the state.
At the fifth year of failing AYP, the school must plan to restructure, according to the DOE Web site.
The restructuring plan must be approved by the DOE and will be implemented the following year if the school fails to meet AYP benchmarks for the sixth year, according Vespucci.
DOE Acting Commissioner of Education Lucille E. Davy said in a press release, “While we have been supportive of federal attempts to quantify accountability, it’s important for schools, parents and the public to understand that the New Jersey DOE doesn’t regard AYP as the only measurement of student achievement or progress.”
She continued, “We have very high expectations and very high standards here, and while we are making progress, there is still a great deal to be done if we are to prepare our children to compete in the 21st century.”
The across the board standard testing can be a problem for diverse districts, such as Long Branch, Ferraina said.
“I am a strong supporter of [NCLB], but I am also a strong supporter of making changes. To be judged across the board, OK that is fine, but when you paint the picture with the results, paint it clearer.”
“Sometimes one size fits all just doesn’t work,” he added.
Ferraina explained that NCLB is an excellent tool to ensure that underprivileged children or children from foreign countries within the state’s school systems are receiving an quality education.
“There is no reason why disadvantaged students or students from other countries shouldn’t pass the test after being in the system for 18 months to two years,” he said. “But this test does not help special education students.”
“Schools should be meeting the needs of special education students and following their plans to a T and using good programs, not testing them.
“There are so many positives with [NCLB], but the special education testing is the negative,” Ferraina added.

