Released by the New Jersey Department of Education Results for each school separately of spring standardized testing on Friday, a long-overdue step advocates have called critical to planning the best ways to recover learning losses from the COVID-19 pandemic.
New Jersey was among the last three states to publish their results on public dashboards, along with Vermont and Maine, according to Collaborative for Student Success, which monitors the release of such results.
Many advocates, legislators, and members of the state board of education have called on the ministry to do so School-by-school numbers released earlier. The department released scores for districts and families earlier in the fall and released grade-level results last week, which showed Loss of seven years of academic progress.
The most comprehensive results came from the New Jersey Student Learning Assessments in English/Language Arts for grades 3-9, in math for grades 3-8 as well as geometry and algebra I and II, and in science for grades 5, 8, and 11.
The grades are divided into five levels of proficiency. The first three are “does not yet meet the requirements”, “partially meets the requirements”, and “approaches expectations”. Students deemed brilliant have reached levels 4 and 5, “Meeting Expectations” or “Exceeding Expectations”.
Results are also shown By school, district, and state, according to racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups, gender, special needs, and English learner status.
For example, our Grade 7 English/Language Arts results showed that 52.7% of all students are proficient. There was a 26.4-point gap between students who were economically disadvantaged and those who were not.
Statistics have been edited to protect the confidentiality of individual students.
Stephen Baker, a spokesperson for the New Jersey Education Federation, the largest teachers’ union in the state, said that while it’s good to know what happened last year, it’s even more important to agree on next steps.
“As we emerge from the pandemic, we face a severe teacher shortage that threatens to hamper our recovery efforts,” he said.
Betsy Ginsburg, president of the Garden State Schools Coalition, a group that represents about 100 districts, hopes the findings will help districts hone their efforts to deal with the social and emotional effects of delayed learning.
“The results should not be used in pejorative or political ways to boost the morale of teachers and students,” she said. “It is important to remember that test scores are, at best, snapshots in time and do not tell the full story of where our students are now or where they will be in the future.”
Information and transparency remain important to guide next steps, said Paula White, executive director of JerseyCAN, an education advocacy group, calling it a “day of wake-up for the state of education” in the state.
“One may be able to slow down the information-sharing process, or even dump information on the Friday before the holiday season — but facts still matter,” she said. “And while this conversation should have started months ago — the real work starts tomorrow.”
She said she and other advocates will fight to make education a top priority for the state “and do everything we can to help put a real plan of action on deck to address the learning crisis in New Jersey.”
The state has also released results for the Dynamic Learning Mapping tests for students with special needs, the ACCESS test for English language learners, and the New Jersey Graduate Aptitude Assessment tests, which are being tested as potential graduation requirements.
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Tina Kelly can be reached at [email protected].
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