ROBBINSVILLE: Schools to work harder on NCLB mandates

by Jessica Ercolino, Staff Writer
   ROBBINSVILLE — The district will be looking at ways to improve the testing results of students with disabilities in order to meet state No Child Left Behind standards next year, Superintendent John Szabo said this week.
   According to a recently released state report, three area schools did not meet Adequate Yearly Progress standards for the program.
   Robbinsville’s Pond Road Middle School did not meet NCLB standards because too few students classified by the state as disabled improved their test scores for mathematics, according to state Department of Education spokeswoman Beth Auerswald.
   Dr. Szabo said he believes the school would have met the benchmarks if not for increases in minimum passing scores last year, but the district is “examining what needs to be done and seeking to improve.”
   He said, “We’re not talking about a large segment of the community, but we do have a specialized population that had some difficulty meeting the AYP standards at the state level. We do have some work to do, and we are hopeful that we will meet the increased standards next year.”
   If the population of partially proficient students decreases by 10 percent from the previous year’s total, a school makes Safe Harbor and meets AYP standards. Pond Road Middle School made Safe Harbor in language arts, but failed because it did not make Safe Harbor in math.
   Dr. Szabo was unable to provide specific population numbers before The Messenger-Press deadline, but said the school met 40 of 41 targets set by NCLB guidelines.
   According to those guidelines, if one population fails to garner adequate test scores in either language arts or mathematics, the entire school is listed as having failed NCLB standards, Ms. Auerswald said.
   In Plumsted, both New Egypt Middle School and Dr. Gerald H. Woehr Elementary School did not meet AYP standards.
   At the elementary school, the disabled student population did not make Safe Harbor in mathematics. The middle school made Safe Harbor by decreasing its partially proficient disabled student population by 10 percent in language arts, but did not meet the 72 percent passing rate needed for the overall population and, thus, did not meet AYP standards. The school also did not make Safe Harbor in mathematics.
   Superintendent Mark DeMareo refused to comment on the schools’ NCLB failures.