Home News Tribune Online (Central Jersey-East Brunswick, NJ) October 19, 2007

HEADLINE: 2 School Districts Improve

By Erica Harbatkin

New Brunswick and Perth Amboy school districts avoided additional state sanctions this year after meeting No Child Left Behind standards on the 2007 state assessments, the state Department of Education announced Thursday. That means both school districts will be removed from the state's list of districts in need of improvement and will avoid corrective action next year if they meet standards on the 2008 state tests.

New Brunswick and Perth Amboy are among 53 school districts on the state's list of districts designated in need of improvement, an annual list of school districts that have failed to meet No Child Left Behind standards in the last two years. Edison, Old Bridge and Franklin Township were removed from the list after meeting standards for two straight years. Middlesex County Regional Vocational is on the list, but district officials are appealing that designation.

"We set a course in terms of trying to zero in on specific youngsters, and I think this is the beginning of seeing some success in that," said New Brunswick Superintendent Richard Kaplan. "It's encouraging, but we're not going to celebrate until we're off the list altogether. Our goal is to meet (adequate yearly progress) two years in a row."

Districts are removed from the list after making adequate yearly progress for two straight years, but the standards will be higher next year as the state moves toward No Child Left Behind's goal of 100 percent proficiency by 2014.

New Brunswick is considered a "DINI 3" district because it missed benchmarks for four straight years before meeting standards this year. This is the first year New Brunswick met adequate yearly progress since the implementation of the list of districts in need of improvement in the 2003-04 school year.

Perth Amboy met standards the first year but missed them the next three years, making it a "DINI 2" district. If Perth Amboy had missed standards again this year, it would have faced corrective action such as deferment of Title I funding, replacing district personnel or implementing new curricula.

"These are things that we would do normally — we just have to do it in accordance with the guidelines that they require," Perth Amboy Superintendent John Rodecker said, referring to the district improvement plan required for districts labeled in need of improvement. "I don't disagree with the fact that we have have to look at alternate ways to do things in order to get results. But the documentation to demonstrate it is so involved that it just takes up time that could be spent doing other things like focusing on what's going on in the classroom and dealing with teachers and students rather than sitting in a room putting a report together."
New Brunswick faced sanctions after last year's tests but won't face any additional action unless it misses benchmarks again next year.

Missing the mark
No Child Left Behind standards split student populations into 41 subgroups, categorizing students by race, disabilities, language and socioeconomics. A district that misses the benchmark in any one of those subgroups in each of the elementary-, middle- and high-school levels is labeled in need of improvement.

Many districts that meet benchmarks for the general education population are labeled in need of improvement because they missed benchmarks in subgroups such as students with disabilities and students with limited English skills.
New Brunswick has tried to focus on those students through an assessment system that determines the specific content areas in which each student is deficient.

"That's a big thing because it very easily, very succinctly, shows the kids, shows where they are and recommends some of the things teachers can do," Kaplan said.
Franklin is among 50 districts in the state piloting a similar program this year.
In Perth Amboy, which made all 41 indicators at the elementary school level but missed some benchmarks in middle school and high school, Rodecker said bringing the older students up to standards will take more time than the law provides.

"Our students are faced with challenges that may not be present in other districts," Rodecker said, citing the large immigrant population and high student mobility rates. "Realistically, we need to overcome those challenges, and maybe No Child Left Behind isn't giving us enough time. We're trying to do something that's revolutionary, that may have been neglected in the past. Now we're trying to right those wrongs, and I think that (the law) may need to be more lenient before you start slapping people with labels."
Middlesex County Vocational is the only school district in the county to miss district standards this year, but district officials appealed to the Department of Education on Aug. 31 because the scores of 23 special-education students haven't been accounted for, they said.

Those 23 students had taken the Alternate Proficiency Assessment, which is geared toward students with the most severe disabilities and won't be scored until early next year. At Middlesex County Vocational, those scores could make the difference between being a "DINI 2" district and being removed from the list altogether.

Superintendent Karen McCloud-Hjazeh emphasized that the vocational school district faces different challenges from other districts since students don't enter the district until ninth grade.
"I am receiving youngsters from 25 different municipalities in Middlesex County," McCloud-Hjazeh said. "The result is, while (the state test) does in some way depict my school district's education, it also depicts the education of the districts that they attended prior to coming to me."
No Child Left Behind also inadvertently sets higher standards for vocational school districts. In order to be placed on the list of districts in need of improvement, K-12 districts have to miss standards at the elementary, middle and high school levels. Since vocational school districts only have high schools, one missed standard leads to a failing label for the entire district.
Edison, Old Bridge and Franklin missed targets for two consecutive years before meeting them in 2006 and 2007, placing them in a group of 12 districts that were removed from the list this year.

"I think it's part of the ongoing work that the district has been doing in terms of improving the quality of instruction in the classroom in the areas of literacy and math to support to growth of our teachers," said Franklin Superintendent Edward Seto, who is new to the district this year. "There are a number of things that are going on that contributed to this improvement and we are constantly looking at what we're doing and trying to find ways to improve what were doing."

Over the last year, he said, the district focused on matching curriculum to the state standards, mapping curriculum to align it from class to class, and ensuring consistency across the schools and classrooms.

"The standards for staying off the list get higher each year so it's very easy to slip back, so we want to make sure we continue building and don't slip back," Seto said. "This is just the first step."