New state school performance report raises the stakes in Ridgewood
Friday February 14, 2014, 2:36 PM
BY LAURA HERZOG
STAFF WRITER
The Ridgewood News
The 2012-2013 School Performance Reports, which the state released last week, are as confusing as ever, highlighting even more areas for improvement in an already high-performing district, Ridgewood school officials said.
While confusion is a typical complaint about state school reports, this year’s is made worse by the fact that they were introduced only last year, replacing the former “School Report Cards” to “bring more information to educators and stakeholders about the performance of schools,” according to the state’s NJ School Performance Interpretive Guide.
Schools are now measured for the first time based on similar “peer” schools, with a new emphasis on measuring college and career readiness and student growth percentiles, on which teachers will now be evaluated. This new focus, administrators said, is placing increasing pressure on schools to improve.
According to Superintendent Daniel Fishbein, administrators are currently reviewing the latest reports on each of the district’s schools, which are available for public access via a link on the district website, by looking up “each school in the peer group to determine accuracy and see how like test scores impact rating.”
“This new performance report is so … different than in the past, that it will take years for the public to get used to this new report versus what we had in the past,” Fishbein said. “The same data has become much more high stakes.”
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