Quality Public Education for All New Jersey Students

 

4-5-13 Star Ledger - New school report cards coming from state Ed Dept
...'State education officials released drafts of the new report cards to school superintendents last month and many expressed concerns about the accuracy of the state's data sets.Erlichson said state education officials culled data from more than a dozen sources to prepare the reports. Though state officials corrected many of the errors, they were not able to address all of them, Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf said. The state Department of Education plans to release the reports this month anyway. "This was a massive undertaking and we made multiple efforts to ask districts to check their data before we began preparing these reports," Cerf said. "When districts didn't like what they saw, they looked at their data more closely and asked for adjustments." "We can't make all of those changes for a complicated set of reasons," Cerf said. "It's very complicated..."' (GSCS Note: Concerns have similarly be expressed at the GSCS Board table.)

Star Ledger - New school report cards coming from state Ed Dept

By Jessica Calefati/The Star-Ledger The Star-Ledger
Follow on Twitter
on April 03, 2013 at 12:57 PM, updated April 03, 2013 at 2:52 PM


TRENTON
Report cards released annually by the state that provide detailed information about public schools' spending, enrollment and test scores will now include new indicators of student performance, state education officials told members of the state Board of Education this morning.

In previous years, the report cards only included schools' average standardized test scores and graduation rates.

When the new report cards are made public in the next few weeks, parents and teachers will be able to compare high schools based on students' PSAT scores and Advanced Placement course participation. They'll also know which middle schools have the worst rates of chronic absenteeism and the highest numbers of students enrolled in Algebra I courses.

"Schools are the units of change, and the department wants to focus on schools that most need our assistance," assistant state commissioner of education Bari Erlichson said. "To do so effectively, we needed new metrics."

Erlichson said graduation rates and percentages of students who pass the state's High School Proficiency Assessment - a graduation requirement for New Jersey students - were not nuanced enough to effectively separate the state's best high schools from the worst.

State education officials released drafts of the new report cards to school superintendents last month and many expressed concerns about the accuracy of the state's data sets.

Erlichson said state education officials culled data from more than a dozen sources to prepare the reports.

Though state officials corrected many of the errors, they were not able to address all of them, Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf said. The state Department of Education plans to release the reports this month anyway.

"This was a massive undertaking and we made multiple efforts to ask districts to check their data before we began preparing these reports," Cerf said. "When districts didn't like what they saw, they looked at their data more closely and asked for adjustments."

"We can't make all of those changes for a complicated set of reasons,": Cerf said. "It's very complicated."