School District Reveals Student Test Scores

Students in the Scotch Plains-Fanwood school district rank higher in proficiency than most other students in the state.

That determination was made based on an analysis of students’ 2009 ASK and HSPA test scores, which were presented to the public Thursday night during the Board of Education’s meeting.

In grades three and four, students scored 10 to 15 percent lower than last year on the ASK test, but that was mostly due to the state changing the way in which it measures a student's proficiency, Supervisor of Instruction Joan Mast said. These grade levels were on par, though, with the scores earned by students at schools of comparable size and demographic, including, but not limited to, Berkeley Heights, Cranford, Mountainside, New Providence, Summit and Westfield.

The district measured all results against these standards, a first which Mast said has given them a better idea of performance than in the past, when they just compared scores to the entire state.

In grades five, six, seven and eight, proficiency measurements on the ASK test were changed in 2008, not 2009. The scores in all four grades reflected that, as they went down in 2008 immediately after the change, but improved by several points this year.

In 11th grade, students went up by a point on the language arts portion of the HSPA test, but decreased by about four points in math.

Fourth and eighth graders are the only ones required to complete a science section of the ASK test. Nearly thirty six percent of fourth graders were considered proficient, and 57.9 percent advanced proficient, in 2009. The former number was a slight decrease from last year, but still higher than that at comparable schools. Advanced proficiency among fourth graders was up in the district, while slightly below that elsewhere.

For eighth graders, science proficiency went up by a point, while advanced proficiency went down by about 2.5. The district’s proficiency was still above that of other comparable schools, but advanced proficiency was slightly below.

All results included both general and special education students.

“When the committee was able to see these results ahead of time, we were really impressed; the district can really be proud of the work being done,” Board Vice President Nancy Bauer said, adding that staff is looking deeper into the results to see where they can help individual students obtain their objectives.

Board member Donald Parisi pointed out that there are two huge differences to the way the data was analyzed this year: one being the decision to compare it to the district’s peer group of schools, the second being the fact that they’ve started tracking a class of students’ performance over the years.

“This year, what the administration has done was to take that class of 2017 and show their results in third grade, fourth grade,” Parisi said. “This gives us a better idea of how students are progressing.”

Parisi took his analysis of the data one step further after Superintendent Margaret Hayes recently raised the question of how the district’s per-pupil expenditures compared to other schools.

After assessing spending data from the state Department of Education, Parisi concluded that the Scotch Plains-Fanwood school district has the fifth lowest per-pupil expenditure out of 34 comparable K-12 schools in the state. The average school that's similar to SP-F spends $12,960 per student each year, Parisi said. SP-F spends $11,903.

“We get the same results and perhaps better for $5 million less than our peer groups,” he said. “Regardless of how you see these results, academically compared to how we get there financially, it’s a proven value.”

During the public portion of the meeting, one parent questioned what the results said about special needs students. When the data is broken up, it’s revealed that these students, in grades three and four in particular, marked notable drops from last year.

“In terms of trends and scores, we are very concerned about that,” Hayes said in response. “For some students, testing is not the best way to show what they are achieving, and yet all are required to take some kind of test at the same grade level. Still, we’re working very diligently to improve our outcomes on these scores for every child. We’ve worked over the last few years to make sure our special education teachers are more well-versed on the content of the tests.”

In addition to the standardized test scores, Mast also presented high schoolers’ overall performance on the AP and SAT tests.

On SAT subject tests, which are not mandatory, but are required by certain colleges and universities, students at SPFHS scored above the state average in all subjects, except U.S. History and Physics, on which they were a few points below.

On the overall SAT reasoning test, students scored higher than both the state and national averages.

AP students achieved higher scores on these college-level exams than other students on all subjects, except Spanish, in which case the SPFHS average was 3.18, and the national average, 3.55.

“We can all agree that these are outstanding results,” Parisi said. “There are maybe one or two areas where we need to do a better job, but if there was a gap last year, the gap has decreased this year.”

Hayes stated that the entire presentation will soon be posted on the district’s Web site.

To access the document now, go here.