Schools

BOE Plans Outreach to NJ Monthly

Finn says board should be "proactive" on rankings.

The is planning a more proactive approach to New Jersey Monthly’s rankings of high schools for 2012.

Board of Education members David Finn and Mitch Slater have indicated that they would like the BOE to form a committee to examine how the magazine calculates it’s biannual ratings and also discuss the rankings system with the statewide publication. Westfield High School’s ranking in 2010, continuing a downward slide in the past several rankings.

Last year, Schools Superintendent Margaret Dolan said that the way the district interpreted new state guidelines on class size calculations caused the drop. The new guidelines showed a rise in class sizes at WHS from 19 in 2008 to 26.4 in 2010.

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“We read the directions literally in this district,” Dolan said last year. “If you read it literally you included all of your students. But if you read it literally you did not use all of your teachers.”

Dolan is fond of saying that Westfield school officials follow rules literally.

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“Rather than wait for New Jersey Monthly to begin their work, we as a district should start the pre-work,” Finn said. “So that the mistakes that were made do not occur again and present the district in the best light.”

Finn said part of the process will be to reach out to New Jersey Monthly officials to discuss the rankings system. He said he has been discussing the plan with Slater, his ally in the board’s new guard alliance, along with other board members.

This effort may be the first time a local school district has reached out to the magazine to discuss the rankings system. Officials from the New Jersey School Boards Association cannot remember the last time they heard of a school system reaching out to the magazine.

New Jersey Monthly Editor Ken Schlager said that in going through the rankings process three times, he has not been approached by a district looking to discuss the process.

“Nobody has reached out proactively in the three times I’ve been through this,” he said.

Schlager noted that the magazine uses data culled from the state school report cards, which are issued by the state Department of Education. He said the magazine and the magazine’s research firm decide which items to cull from the report cards. The data on the report cards is self-reported by school districts.

Schlager said that as part of the ramp up to the 2012 rankings, he plans to meet with local school leaders from around the state, which has been past practice with New Jersey Monthly editors. At the same time, he did not expect to have a district want to discuss the process with him.

“If Westfield is being proactive, that’s great,” he said.

Schlager said the ranking process has not changed much in recent years and one of his goals has been to conduct a complete review of the system. As part of that he wants to meet with the local school leaders to hear input.

In the past, Schlager has heard input from districts after the rankings issue comes out – in the form of complaints from districts that did not like the rankings.

“When you do rankings like we do, you can’t make everyone happy,” he said. “There are always complaints from school districts that don’t perform as well in the rankings as they think they should. A lot of them have legitimate concerns about the whole system. I want to hear those concerns and there may be ways to improve the rankings.”

Finn said that he would like to discuss with Schlager how the rankings are gathered and also address internally any questions in terms of how the data is calculated for the report card. He said it is possible the district can improve the ways the data is calculated.

Finn stressed he is not talking about “fudging” the numbers.

“Answer the question the way it’s asked and not how you think they want it,” he said.


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