Elementary Districts Fare Better than River Dell in New School Performance Reports

Students at Oradell Public, Roosevelt and Cherry Hill elementary schools were found to be better performing than those at the Regional schools when compared to their new peer groups and the state according to the new School Performance Reports.

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.

Oradell students academic performance is considered high when compared to their peer group (in the 73rd percentile) and statewide (92nd percentile). Roosevelt School was ranked in the 70th percentile (peer group) and 88th (statewide) for their academic achievement while Cherry Hill was 55th (peer group) and 82nd (statewide).

Regional Middle School and High School students were found to be "lagging performance" in their peer groups with the middle school in the 27th percentile and the high school in the 37th. Statewide, the middle school was deemed in the 86th percentile while the high school was 64th.

“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.”

River Dell Middle School was placed in the same peer group as middle schools in Glen Rock, Ridgewood and Wyckoff while the high school was compared to high schools in Emerson, Mahwah, Paramus, Ramsey, Waldwick and Westwood.

Oradell Public School and Roosevelt School were combined into the same peer group along with elemenatary schools from Franklin Lakes, Paramus, Park Ridge, Ridgewood, River Vale, Saddle River, Tenafly, Upper Saddle River and Wyckoff.

Cherry Hill's peer group includes Roosevelt School and PreK through 6 schools in Closter, Cresskill, Demarest, Franklin Lakes, Glen Rock, Old Tappan, Paramus, Park Ridge, Tenafly and Upper Saddle River.

Copies of the Performance Reports can be found online for the Middle School, High School, Oradell Public, Roosevelt and Cherry Hill.

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

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