District students make the grade

School passes NCLB tests

By: Lacey Korevec
   The Cranbury School has once again passed the test.
   According to Cranbury School Principal and Chief Administrator Carol Malouf, the district has met all 40 requirements in the Adequate Yearly Progress standards set by the No Child Left Behind Act, but she has concerns about the way the act monitors student success.
   The No Child Left Behind Act was signed by President George W. Bush in 2002. The law sets requirements for teachers and requires states to establish student performance standards and evaluate them annually. The law allows states to develop their own system of evaluating student assessment based on student proficiency tests for language arts and math. Continued problems meeting the state’s goals could allow for parents to shift their children to other district schools and eventual state intervention.
   The results are based on testing of math and language arts literacy in grades three through eight and grade 11. Performance and attendance are the two categories the testing is judged on. There are 10 indicators under each of the two subject’s categories that show the progress of students of specific economic and ethnic groups.
   "We made it and that’s fine," she said. "Other districts that are struggling with it have larger populations than we. My preference would be that they would monitor the progress of children individually, rather than monitoring them in groups because the group that they’re comparing them to, from the year before, has already moved on." Ms. Malouf said she attributes the district’s success to hard working teachers who adjust programs to meet children’s needs and expectations.
   "Every district struggles with this and it always remains a continuous issue," she said. "The best we can hope for is just to provide the best instruction we can and help them strive for the best achievement we can."
   Though Cranbury has always been able to meet all of the mandated requirements, Ms. Malouf said she is concerned about special needs students being tested at the same level as other student groups.
   "They’re expected, as a subgroup, to have the same achievement as the whole total population," she said. "I worry about the special needs children because they all have to take the test, unless they have an alternate assessment and only 1 percent have that. So, children are responsible for taking this test and then they get frustrated because they can’t be successful at it. So, even though Cranbury has made AYP every year, I understand the difficulty at other districts because they have more of a diverse population than we."
   Despite the district’s success, she said teachers will continue to focus on individual student achievement.
   "I just think there needs to be a better way," she said. "I think districts are looking more carefully at what they’re really not monitoring, each child’s individual growth and that’s really what you want to do, monitor a child by his or her individual growth."