EAST BRUNSWICK — A report issued by East Brunswick Deputy Superintendent of Schools Evelyn Ogden spotlighted some encouraging statistics in the township’s public schools.
“For years, we’ve looked at a very broad curriculum,” Ogden said at the May 23 Board of Education meeting. “It’s not just reading and math, but a broad curriculum of nine standard areas that include the arts, social studies and physical education — the idea being that students should receive a broad education [while] focusing on what might be considered basic skills.”
The annual report on progress and mastery of the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards showed that students in East Brunswick are indeed getting a broad education, exceeding state and national averages along the way.
The district-wide score for students taking the SAT averaged 1674 — more than 150 points higher than the state average of 1508.
“That’s tremendous. That’s going to get you into most any college that you’re interested in,” Ogden said. “The state [is] now saying that on the SAT, to be fully prepared for college, you need an average [score] of 1550.”
To that end, 66 percent of East Brunswick students who took the SAT scored 1550 or higher, compared with the state average of 43 percent.
Those results appear to play into the fact that 94 percent of students indicated that they plan to attend college after graduating East Brunswick High School (EBHS), and 86 percent follow through with those plans. Across the state, 62 percent of high school graduates pursue higher education.
Additionally, 97 percent of students pursuing higher education were still enrolled in a higher-education program 16 months after they graduated from EBHS. That number stands out next to only 86 percent of students statewide who accomplished the same feat and 77 percent of students across the nation.
Thanks to the advanced placement (AP) curriculum and county college-level classes that grant college credit, many district students are ahead of the game and saving money when they get to college. In the 2011- 12 school year, students took 1,122 AP exams and showed a 92 percent pass rate. Students also took 769 college-level classes.
“That amounts to [an estimated] over $2 million in college courses that students don’t have to take when they go to college,” Ogden said. “We feel we’re saving parents [money], along with giving students the confidence when they go off to college that they really can do college work.”
The East Brunswick Public Schools district provides 13,000 hours of instruction, exclusive of lunch hours, recess and time in between classes, according to the report.
Contact Thomas Castles at [email protected].