New School Report Shows Elementary Schools Struggling Among Peers, Statewide

Elementary school students atBerkley Street and BF Gibbs schools in New Milford were found to be lagging behind their peers while the middle school was found to be high performing when compared to their new peer groups and the state according to the new School Performance Reports. Academic achievement results were not available for New Milford High School.

Released Wednesday, the reports are a new version of the long-running School Reports Cards that have measured school performance on a variety of metrics since the 1990s.

According to the report, Berkley and Gibbs students were ranked between the 33rd and 39th percentile in their peer groups and in the 49th percentile in the state. David E. Owens students were ranked high in their peer group (65th percentile) and statewide (68th percentile).

While performance results were not available for the high school, NMHS's college and career readiness was ranked about average when compared to schools across the state and its peer group at the 59th percentile in both cases. The high school's graduation and post-secondary performance is high when compared to schools across the state in the 78th percentile. Additionally, its graduation and post-secondary readiness is very high when compared to its peers in the 87th percentile.

“These new school performance reports were developed with the input of stakeholders across the state and provide a significant amount of new data to present a more complete picture of school performance,” said Commissioner Chris Cerf in a press release. “We hope this data will help schools and stakeholders engage in local goal setting and improvement to help all students graduate from high school ready for college and career.”

The new reports use many of the same sources of data like student achievement, graduation and dropout rates, demographics and class sizes, but they also match each school up with 30 peer schools from across the state. Schools are matched based on demographics, percentage of low-income students, percentage of special needs students and percentage of limited English-speaking students. Once matched, schools are compared to their peers and with state targets. Peer groups include charter schools across the state.

The performance reports include both data and a narrative overview to help users better understand school performance in the context of state performance and the performance of similar “peer schools.” The reports also include a color-coded guide to help readers identify where schools met individual or statewide targets. 

“While the evaluation of student outcome data is crucial for school improvement, we know that these data alone cannot capture the dozens of other essential elements of schools such as a positive school climate, participation in extracurricular programs and the development of non-cognitive skills,” said Chief Performance Office Bari Erlichson in a press release. “However, by focusing on college and career readiness and including meaningful comparisons for schools, we hope that these new reports will inform conversations at the local level about where schools are doing well and where they can continue to improve.”

The only other Bergen County high school included in the same peer group as New Milford was Ridgefield Memorial. David E. Owens was compared to schools from Lyndhurst and Wood-Ridge.

Berkley and BF Gibbs were included in the same peer group with elementary schools from Bergenfield, Saddle Brook, Mahwa and Westwood.

Copies of the Performance Reports can be found online for the High School, David E. Owens Middle School, BF Gibbs and Berkley Street schools.

Visit NJ Spotlight to view an interactive map of average total SAT scores for all New Jersey high schools in 2011-2012.

Follow New Milford Patch on Facebook and Twitter. Click here to sign-up for our daily newsletter and get local news like this delivered to your in-box.