ASK, and you shall receive
Holmdel schools meet many goals for improvement on tests
BY JAMIE ROMM Staff Writer

HOLMDEL - The results are in for township school students, and they're mostly positive.

At the Oct. 10 Board of Education meeting, Assistant Superintendent Mary Beth Currie discussed the goals and results from the 2006-07 school year in the Quality Assurance Annual Report, as well as the district's scores in the NJ ASK (Assessment of Skills and Knowledge). NJ ASK is a state assessment of student achievement in language arts, math and science that was implemented in 2003 to meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act.

At the Village School, one of the goals was to reduce the number of third-grade students classified in the partial proficient range of the language arts portion of the NJ ASK by 10 percent. This goal was achieved: the number dropped from 42 to 27 percent.

The other goal was to increase the percentage of third-grade students scoring in advanced proficiency in language arts on the NJ ASK by 5 percent. This goal was also met: the number went from 4 percent to 10 percent, a fact that Currie was happy to see.

"This task was much harder to accomplish," Currie said. "It's a great achievement."

At Indian Hill School, the goals were not met but progress was shown.

The aim for fifth-graders taking the NJ ASK was to demonstrate a 10 percent decrease in the number of students scoring in the partially proficient range, and a 5 percent increase in the number of students who scored in the advanced proficient range in math. There was a 25 percent decrease (from 20 to 15) in the number of students who scored in the partially proficient range, but there was a 10 percent decrease (from 165 to 149) in the number of advanced proficient students.

"It is important to note that more than half of the students [149 out of 277] scored in the advanced proficient range," Currie said. "That number we should be proud of."

At the William R. Satz Middle School, one of the goals was to see the number of eighth-grade special education students scoring in the partially proficient level in math and language arts literacy reduced by 5 percent from the prior year. This was not achieved; the number of eighth-grade students scoring in the partially proficient range increased by 34 percent in math and 9 percent in language arts.

"It is important to note that the number of special-needs students who were tested increased by 33 percent from the prior year in the grade level," Currie said.

At the high school, the goal was for at least 80 percent of the students in the 2005-06 English Language Learners program who were now being monitored in the regular English sequence to satisfactorily score above a grade of 70. This was achieved, in that 83 percent earned higher than a 70.

"The students did much better than a score of 70," Currie said. "Seventy was just our goal."

Another goal the school had was to raise the attendance rate by 1 percent from 96.25. This goal was not met, but the rate did increase by one-tenth of a percent.

Currie will be presenting these numbers again along with the goals for this year at the next Board of Education meeting on Oct. 24.