Schools

Fort Lee Elementary Students Outperform State Counterparts on Tests

But the interim superintendent says that while he's proud of the district's students, the numbers can be deceiving, and that he's focused on remedying the district-wide "achievement gap" in special education, limited English proficiency and more.

Many students at Fort Lee’s four elementary schools achieved higher scores on standardized tests than their counterparts in the rest of the state, annual school report cards released by the state Department of Education (DOE) Thursday show.

The report cards show a greater percentage of students in Fort Lee schools who achieved "proficient" and especially "advanced" standing on the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJASK) exams for Language Arts and Mathematics than the state average. And in many cases, those numbers for the 2010-2011 school year are up from the previous year within the district as well.

But Interim Superintendent of Schools Steven Engravalle says that while he’s pleased with the results overall, the data can be deceiving when viewed only from a broad perspective.

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“Our district continues to achieve at a very high level as a total district population, and we’re very proud of that,” Engravalle said. “We have terrific teachers who work very hard with our students; we’ve got outstanding students who continue to achieve.”

But he also said that if you really dig into the report cards, you’ll find specific areas in which the district needs to improve.

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“What’s important to me is our achievement gap,” Engravalle said. “And we continue to have a very large a achievement gap across our district in two very important categories.”

Those categories, he said, are special education and limited English proficiency.

In some Fort Lee schools the achievement gap for those sub-categories, as well as what he called “perceived economic disadvantage,” is more than 50 percent.

“So while we’re doing terrific things in our classes, and students are achieving at a very high level, we want to make certain that every student—regardless of a disability, regardless of perceived economic disadvantage, as well as limited English proficiency—we need to make sure that we provide the proper supports and resources to those categories of students so they’re able to meet with the same success as the total school district population,” Engravalle said.

He added that the district needs to scrutinize its practices and look very carefully at individual student results "based upon how each individual student achieved, whether they’re regular ed., special ed., perceived economically disadvantaged or LEP."

"We want to make sure that those students are achieving year-to-year," he said.

The data in the report cards is for the 2010-2011 academic year, and Engravalle said he's already looking forward to what this year's number's will look like.

The NJASK exams measure third through sixth graders’ proficiencies in Language Arts and Mathematics. Fourth graders also take an NJASK science exam. The report cards contain detailed information for each school in five areas: School Environment, Student Information, School Performance, Staff Information and District Financial Data.

“We celebrate our successes,” Engravalle said. “Remember, we have a at . That was based upon consistent progress in sub-groups over time, and we’re very proud of that.”

He also said that particular success was in no small part thanks to “the dedicated work of our teachers and the support from our parents and community for those students.”

“But we want to make sure that every child in this district achieves at a high level, and they’re capable of it,” he added. “We are a great district, but we need to do better for all students, and I think that by doing that, we’ll actually be able to also raise the bar even higher for our high-flyers. We’ll be able to then bring our lower achieving students up to proficiency levels and really soar as a district.”

Below are the NJASK results for all four Fort Lee elementary schools combined. To view the complete report card for each Fort Lee school, click here, and then select the specific school you want to review.

Fort Lee NJASK Language Arts Literacy (Values Are Percentages)

Grade 3 4 5 6

Proficient, 2010-11

65.1 63.9 62.8 59.9 2009-10 61.9 50.9 54.2 66.1 State, 2010-11 56.2 56 55.2 59.9 Advanced, 2010-11 14.9 12 12 21.8 2009-10 11.3 21.5 21.9 18.1 State, 2010-11 7.3 7.3 6.2 7.4

Fort Lee NJASK Mathematics

Grade 3 4 5 6 Proficient, 2010-11 34.1 44.4 33.5 36.9 2009-10 44.9 35.6 32.6 38.6 State, 2010-11 40.6 47.5 41.2 50 Advanced, 2010-11 53.7 45.5 55.2 53.6 2009-10 44.2 51.8 53 48.1 State, 2010-11 38.8 32.5 39.8 27.9

Fort Lee NJASK 4th Grade Science

Proficient, 2010-11 2009-10 State, 2010-11 Advanced, 2010-11 2009-10 State, 2010-11 38.6 36 42.3 55.2 57.6 48.2

Patch will take a closer look at the data contained in the report cards, including some of what they reveal about and in subsequent articles.

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