The New Jersey Department of Education released school-by-school results of the spring standardized tests on Friday, a long-awaited move advocates called crucial for planning the best ways to recover learning losses from the COVID-19 pandemic.
New Jersey was among the last three states to release its results on its public dashboards, along with Vermont and Maine, according to the Collaborative for Student Success, which monitors the release of such scores.
Many advocates, legislators, and members of the state board of education had called on the department to release school-by-school figures earlier. The department released scores to districts and families earlier in the fall and released grade-level scores last week, which showed a 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 plus Geometry and Algebra I and II, and in Science for grades 5, 8, and 11.
The scores are broken down into five levels of proficiency. The first three are “not yet meeting requirements,” “partially meeting requirements,” and “approaching expectations.” Students considered proficient have reached Levels 4 and 5, “meeting expectations” or “exceeding expectations.”
The results are also presented by school, district, and statewide, according to racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups, gender, and by special needs and English language learner status.
For instance, the seventh-grade English/Language Arts results showed that 52.7% of all students were proficient. There was a 26.4-point gap between students who were economically disadvantaged and those who weren’t.
The statistics were edited to protect the anonymity of individual students.
Steven Baker, the spokesman for the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, said that while it is good to know what happened last year, it’s much more important to agree on next steps.
“As we emerge from the pandemic, we are facing a critical educator shortage that threatens to hamper our recovery efforts,” he said.
Betsy Ginsburg, head of the Garden State Coalition of Schools, a group representing about 100 districts, hoped that the results would help districts hone their efforts to deal with the social and emotional effects of delayed learning.
“The scores should not be used in pejorative or political ways to further demoralize educators and students,” she said. “It is critical to remember that test scores are, at best, snapshots in time and do not tell the whole story of where our students are now or where they will be in the future.”
Calling it a “sobering day for the state of education” in the state, Paula White, the executive director of JerseyCAN, an education advocacy group, said information and transparency remain important to guide the next steps.
“One might be able to slow down the sharing of information, even dump information the Friday before the holiday season – but facts still matter,” she said. “And while this conversation should have started months ago – tomorrow, the real work begins.”
She said she and other advocates would fight to make education the state’s highest priority “and do all we can to help create a true all-hands-on-deck plan to address New Jersey’s learning crisis.”
The state also released results for the Dynamic Learning Map tests for students with special needs, the ACCESS test for English language learners, and the New Jersey Graduation Proficiency Assessment tests, which are being tested as possible graduation requirements.
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Tina Kelley may be reached at [email protected].
