ALLENTOWN- The results of the state’s Quality Assurance Annual Report (QAAR) for the Upper Freehold Regional School District are mixed.
The report reviews several components of the school district, including how well the schools achieved the performance objectives they set for themselves the previous year. The QAAR results for the Upper Freehold Regional School District for the 2006-07 school year were provided at the Nov. 19 Board of Education meeting.
While the middle school had set a goal for 2006-07 to have 83 percent or more of its eighth-grade students taking the state Grade Eight Proficiency Assessment (GEPA) test scoring at or above the proficient level, it did not attain that goal.
In 2006-07 82.5 percent of all students who took the GEPA scored at or above the proficient level. This percentage increased 2.3 percent from 2005-06.
Middle school Principal Mark Guterl said that while the middle school is disappointed that it did not achieve the goal, it recognizes that it only missed the mark by half a percent.
To address the situation, Guterl said the school has started a Math Buddies program for kids testing on the edge of proficiency. The program addresses students who don’t qualify for basic skills classes but need extra help, he said.
Guterl also said that the school district has started a dialogue among Allentown High School (AHS), the middle school and the Millstone Township Middle School to ensure that students entering the high school from both middle schools are learning similar math concepts.
The QAAR goal this year is to have 85 percent of middle school students taking the GEPA score at or above the proficient level in mathematics.
AHS attained its QAAR goal of having 84 percent of its students taking the state High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA) score at or above the proficient level in mathematics. The report showed that 84.3 percent of students scored at or above the proficient level.
AHS Principal Christopher Nagy said the high school has been focused on strengthening students’ skill sets. He said the school encourages the use of a math Web site with practice HSPA and SAT questions.
Next year’s goal for AHS is to have 86 percent of its students taking the HSPA scoring at or above the proficient level in mathematics, and a 10 percent improvement in the percentage of special education students scoring at or above the proficient level in mathematics on the HSPA.
AHS also set a long-term goal. By 2014, the school hopes to have all of its students score at the proficient level in mathematics on the HSPA and to have as many students as possible score at the advanced proficient level, according to Nagy.
For language arts, AHS had set a goal to have 22 percent of its students in 11th grade score at the advanced proficient level in language arts on the HSPA. The school attained that goal, with a total of 26.2 percent of students scoring in that range, which is a 6.4 percent increase from 2005- 06.
Nagy said he is proud of the results, especially since the school’s District Factor Group (DGF), which measures a district’s socioeconomic status ranging from an A for the poorest districts to a J for the wealthie changed to GH a few years ago.
Nagy said the district started out behind in a “group of well-established schools at the top of their game.” He said that if AHS continues to see an increase of a few percentage points each year, it will be among the top schools in its DFG.
AHS has set new language arts goals for 2007-08 to have 95 percent of 11th-graders scoring at the advanced proficient level in the HSPA, and a 2.5 percent improvement in the average verbal SAT score for 12thgrade students.
The elementary school had set a goal to have 7 percent of students in the third and fourth grades score at the advanced proficient level in language arts on the NJ ASK test. The school also wanted to increase the percentage of special-education students in those grades scoring at or above the proficient level to at least 37.6 percent. The school attained both of its goals.
The third grade had 8.9 percent of its students score advanced proficient, and the fourth grade had 9.7 percent of its students score advanced proficient. Third-grade special education had 57.1 percent of its students scoring at the proficient level, and fourth-grade special education had 45.5 percent of its students scoring proficient.
Elementary school Principal Kelly Huggins said the third and fourth grades implemented several new techniques to achieve their goals. She said the students now write more in their classrooms and teachers have been trained with a state writing rubric to grade and evaluate students’ writing.
The new goals for the elementary school are to have 12 percent of its third- and fourth-grade students score at the advanced proficient level on the NJ ASK tests, and to have a 10 percent increase in the combined percentage of special-education students in those grades scoring at or above the proficient level.