NORTHERN BURLINGTON: Districts examine school report card ups and downs

By Geoffrey Wertime, Staff Writer
The state Department of Education’s recent release of the annual New Jersey School Report Cards was a mixed bag for area districts with some schools receiving glowing reports and others scoring lower than state averages.
    Required under a 1995 state law, the report cards, released last week, give statistics for each public school in the state, including performance on standardized tests.
    Schools in the Florence Township School District received a wide range of scores. Florence Township High School students beat state averages on the High School Proficiency Assessment’s language arts literacy test, and SAT scores rose several points over last year to an average of 1,496.
    But at the Riverfront School, where students range from fourth to eighth grade, more students scored partially proficient than in the state or comparable districts in nine of the 12 tests administered there. For example, 55.7 percent of Riverfront’s 115 sixth-graders scored partially proficient on the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge’s language arts literacy test while 42.7 percent was the state average.
    Superintendent Louis Talarico said the district has no argument with the data found in the assessment.
    “We looked through it and found that, on the whole, we really surpassed our expectations as far as growth and our five-year plan,” he said. “We’ve really been putting an emphasis on dealing with our mathematics program” in the high school.
    The school has been employing more technology to help students having difficulty with the subject, he said, as well as giving them after-school assistance.
    “It looks like it’s made an impact,” he said.
    Dr. Talarico said a change in expectations late in the testing season explained the middle school’s low scores and does not necessarily reflect actual student performance.
    “We take a look at that as pretty much a numerical issue,” he said.
    The Bordentown Regional School District showed less disparity in its schools’ results. Bordentown Regional High School fared slightly better than state averages in its HSPA tests, and while SAT scores shot up over last year’s in the district, they still fell below state averages.
    Bordentown Regional Middle School’s scores were very similar to the state’s average scores though considerably fewer of its seventh grade NJSASK math scores were partial than the New Jersey average.
    The district’s achievements were most evident at the Peter Muschal School where NJASK scores in both third-grade literacy and mathematics were significantly better than the state average. Only 4.5 percent of students scored partially proficient on the former test versus the state’s 13.9 percent and a mere 3.6 percent had low scores in math versus 13.2 in the state.
    Scores at the MacFarland Intermediate School improved slightly over the last academic year and were generally slightly better than the state average. At the Clara Barton School, there was a considerably higher percentage of students who scored proficient or advanced than overall in the state.
    Superintendent Constance Bauer credited the district’s success to its maintaining small class sizes and bringing in new programs, particularly in special education.
    “We’re very proud of our teachers and the work that they do,” she said.
    She said the high school’s block scheduling program also allows those students to get more involved in their academics because it lets them spend longer periods of time in their classes.
    Elementary students, she added, are experiencing a new, “very good, very balanced literacy program” as well as the phasing in of Everyday Math, a program that aims to explain math concepts through common scenarios instead of the traditional method of delivery. The program, she said, is in place for kindergarten through second grade and will be phased in through fifth grade next year along with adding Connected Math, a continuation of the program, in sixth through eighth grades.
    Everyday Math has received criticism from parents in nearby school districts, but Dr. Bauer said she was unaware of any local complaints.
    “We believe that program will start to yield some positive outcomes,” she said.
    In every test administered in the Northern Burlington County Regional School District, students outperformed state averages. The largest difference was on the NJASK eighth-grade math test in which 88 percent of NBC Middle School students scored either proficient or advanced while only 67.6 percent did statewide.
    High school students had better scores than the state average and those of comparable districts, though the average SAT score dropped 4 points to 1,513.
    “We do well on our testing,” said Superintendent James Sarruda. “We certainly need to give credit to our faculty. Equally important is the role the parent plays in a child’s education.”
    The community also plays a role in supporting the schools, he noted.
    He said the scores are “very much a function of a class and a student’s ability. We have good and bad classes in regards to test-taking ability.”
    Small fluctuations in scores from year to year are just a measure of that, he said, and the district “(tries) not to overreact on individual scores.”
    Dr. Sarruda said the district has been “totally redesigning the high school experience” in the past two years, including the introduction this year of an engineering program as well as adding video production into programs.
    “I’m not really overly concerned with how Northern Burlington does on these report cards,” he said, “because our standards and expectations are so much higher than what gets measured in these data.”