Westfield School District Addresses State School Report Card

The state of New Jersey Department of Education issued its NJ Schools performance report last week.

The report scores schools statewide in three major categories: Academic achievement, College & Career Readiness and Graduation & Post-secondary.

It compares the schools within each district to "peer schools." In Union County, Westfield's peer school for elementary grades is Berkeley Heights; for middle grade levels, peer schools include Mountainside, New Providence, and Scotch Plains-Fanwood; high school peers are Cranford, Scotch Plains-Fanwood and Clark high schools, the report states. Schools are further ranked against their statewide counterparts.

(To view the state of New Jersey Department of Education's report, click here. See below for individual Westfield schools' performances as per the report.)

For those who may have questions about the Westfield School District's performance or why the federal government is using a new evaluation system, the district has put together the following Q&A: 

WHY A NEW FORMAT FOR THE STATE SCHOOL REPORT CARD?

Parents will recognize most of the data in the new report. The State was required by the federal government to create a new system to report the data. This is the first year for the new format.

WHAT DO THE NEW SCHOOL PERFORMANCE REPORTS FOR 2011-2012 TELL US?

ü  Westfield Schools are performing well.

ü  Limited areas for improvement.

ü  Standardized test scores remain high.

• Westfield High School Proficiency Assessments (HSPA):  98% Language Arts, 95% Math
• WHS composite SAT scores more than 100 points above peer average and more than 200 points above state average. 
• 4-year Graduation rate increased to 98.1%.
• 94% of Advanced Placement test scores are 3 or greater.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU RANK SMALL GROUPS BY PERCENTILE?

• The new School Performance Report creates peer groups of 30 schools and ranks each school with a percentile in Academic Achievement, College & Career Readiness, and Graduation & Post-Secondary.  Does this approach provide meaningful results?
  
  
• Example: 14 of 31 schools in the Westfield High School unique peer group achieved a 98% passing on the Language Arts High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA), and yet their percentile ranks ranged from 39 to 84 regardless of the identical passing score of 98%.
  
  
• In the DOE Interpretive Guide for the Performance Reports, it admits:  “Student outcome data is not always normally distributed.  For example, results on the HSPA exam are significantly skewed as statewide proficiency rates top 94% in LAL (Language Arts) and 83% in math, making both peer group comparisons and statewide rankings less meaningful for those schools with very high proficiency rates.”
  
  

WHAT ARE SOME PROBLEMS WITH THE DATA?

• There is discrepancy in historical data.  For example, the previous years’ School Report Cards have published data which are now shown differently on comparative charts in the School Performance Report.
  
  
• There is lack of financial data.  In previous School Report Cards, the public was able to see how much school districts spent on per pupil costs and how salaries, benefits, administration, etc., affected that expenditure.
  
  
• There is incorrect data:  AP enrollment, passing rates from previous years, number of students taking Algebra in middle school.

Franklin School:

Performance Areas 

Academic Achievement

79

95

100%

College and Career Readiness

71

89

100%

Student Growth

74

78

100%

Jefferson Elementary School:

Performance Areas 

Academic Achievement

37

78

83%

College and Career Readiness

74

87

100%

Student Growth

99

88

100%

McKinley Elementary School:

Performance Areas

Academic Achievement

39

66

67%

College and Career Readiness

81

87

100%

Student Growth

70

66

100%

Tamaques Elementary School: 

Performance Areas

Academic Achievement

71

86

100%

College and Career Readiness

97

94

100%

Student Growth

84

79

100%

Washington Elementary School:

Performance Areas

Academic Achievement

34

82

100%

College and Career Readiness

84

94

100%

Student Growth

67

79

100%

Wilson Elementary School: 

Performance Areas

Academic Achievement

70

93

83%

College and Career Readiness

67

85

100%

Student Growth

35

61

100%

Roosevelt Intermediate School:

Performance Areas

Academic Achievement

70

93

83%

College and Career Readiness

67

85

100%

Student Growth

35

61

100%

Edison Intermediate School:

Performance Areas

Academic Achievement

70

93

100%

College and Career Readiness

24

43

50%

Student Growth

31

73

100%

Westfield High School:

Performance Areas

Academic Achievement

53

79

100%

College & Career Readiness

77

86

100%

Graduation and Post-Secondary

63

84

100%

Academic Achievement measures the content knowledge students have in language arts literacy and math. For elementary and middle schools, this includes measures of the school's proficiency rate on both the Language Arts Literacy and Math sections of the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJ ASK). A proficiency rate is calculated by summing the count of students who scored either proficient or advanced proficient on the assessment and dividing by the count of valid test scores. 

For high schools, this includes measures of the school's proficiency rate on both the Language Arts Literacy and Math sections of the New Jersey High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA). A proficiency rate is calculated by summing the count of students who scored either proficient or advanced proficient on the assessment and dividing by the count of valid test scores. 

College and Career readiness measures the degree to which students are demonstrating behaviors that are indicative of future attendance and/or success in college and careers. For all elementary and middle schools, this includes a measurement of how many students are chronically absent. For schools with middle school grades, it also includes a measurement of how many students take Algebra I in either seventh or eighth grade. For high schools, the scores are calculated by participation in SAT or PSAT tests and in Advanced Placement courses, the report states. 

Student Growth measures the performance of students from one year to the next on the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJ ASK) in Language Arts Literacy and Math when compared to students with a similar history of performance on NJ-ASK, according to the report. 

For high schools, Graduation and Post-Secondary measures the rate at which students who begin high school four years earlier graduate within four years. Also included is a measure of the rate at which students in a particular school drop out of school, the report states.