District Reports Results of 2008-2009 School Goals

Scotch Plains-Fanwood Schools Superintendent Margaret Hayes reported Thursday night the status of the district's 2008-2009 goals, which were approved last year by the Board of Education.

“All of them are challenge goals,” according to Hayes, who also said that the district is meeting all Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) benchmarks under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.

The plan had objectives for elementary, middle and high school students, as well as plans for professional and district-wide development.

The first objective was to meet or exceed NCLB benchmarks at all levels, an area in which the district is currently progressing, by creating two site-based action plans per school.

All elementary schools were asked to have third grade students independently write journal entries in their science classes, and to eventually have a minimum of 85 percent of students demonstrate they can accurately record their observations. According to the presentation given by Hayes, all five elementary schools achieved that goal, with Brunner leading with 96 percent of student accomplishment.

The second goal for Cole, Evergreen and Brunner elementary students was to have the percentage of students scoring in the advanced proficient category on the language arts portion of the fourth grade NJ ASK test match or exceed the percentage of students scoring in that same category at the state level’s District Factor I Grouping, which are schools comparable to SP-F.

The percentage of students scoring in the advanced proficient category at the state level is 12.1 percent. Hayes found that Coles and Evergreen schools both surpassed this goal by having 17.1 and 15.1 percent of students respectively meet those standards.

Brunner only had 8.3 percent of their students meet the advanced proficient standard on the same exam.

McGinn and School One’s second objective was to have the percentage of general education students reach or exceed the advanced proficient category on the language arts portion of the fourth grade NJ ASK test compared to general education students across the state. 

Currently 13.8 percent of regular education students are advanced proficient in language arts in the District Factor I Grouping statewide.

Neither of the SP-F schools were able to meet that goal, with 12.5 percent of McGinn students testing as advanced proficient and 11.5 percent of students at School One doing the same. 

The Park and Terrill Middle School objectives were directly tied to No Child Left Behind. The goal was to have the percentage of students identified by NCLB progress to achieve the revised AYP benchmarks in language arts literacy and math, according to the presentation. 

The board will be updated once the latest AYP results have been published. 

The Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School goal was to have five percent more students score as advanced proficient on the tenth grade NJ PASS language arts section than they did in the previous year on the ninth grade NJ PASS. The same group of students was studied from 2008 to 2009.

In the spring of 2008, 39 percent of the students that took the ninth grade NJ PASS were scored as advanced proficient on the language arts portion of the test. While the goal was for 44 percent of students to reach that benchmark on the tenth grade NJ PASS the following year, only 34 percent did, a decrease in five percentage points.

Hayes contributes the shortfall to changes in the way the test was written and scored, coming from the state’s Department of Education.

The second objective for the high school was to meet or exceed the High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA) benchmarks in math as set by the state’s Department of Education. 

All students were able to achieve the target score in both math and language arts literacy in 2009, according to the New Jersey Department of Education’s preliminary results. 

Another goal for the entire district was to reduce the achievement gap for minority students, according to Hayes. Scotch Plains-Fanwood schools have implemented several new programs, including Glance Ahead 2009, Study Island, the S.T.A.R.T. program and the Middle School Initiative in Language Arts across the curriculum to move forward towards that target.

Professional development was also a key objective for Scotch Plains-Fanwood. Teachers were able to attend several workshops and seminars to update classrooms and lesson plans. 

The district was also able to implement a new half-day integrated pre-school service for children.

New technological advances were also adopted over the past year. Naviance, a program to ease administrators and families through the college process, has been implemented in the high school. 

A $52,000 grant was also awarded to the district to enhance school safety via security cameras in the high school, with help from the Scotch Plains Police Department.

Lastly, an electronic notification system has been put in place for the 2009-2010 school year.

A draft of the 2009-2010 district goals for public schools was introduced to the board as well. Those goals include continuing to meet and exceed NCLB benchmarks, developing a new plan to update technology through 2013 and developing lessons to integrate global and service learning into the curriculum.