Administrators in the Lenape Regional High School District received the 2014 New Jersey School Performance Reports for the Lenape, Shawnee, Cherokee and Seneca high schools.
“Overall we are very pleased with the report, which accurately reflects the district’s strengths as a high achieving district,” said Superintendent of Schools Carol Birnbohm. “The district continues to have higher than average graduation and post-secondary enrollment rates as well as SAT scores. Additionally, we’ve addressed areas of improvement from the 2013 report.”
The NJ School Performance Reports evaluate school performance in three key areas: academic performance, graduation and post-secondary performance and college and career readiness.
In the performance area of academic achievement, two of the four high schools met 100 percent of the New Jersey Department of Education targets. Cherokee High School met 92 percent and Seneca High School met 83 percent of the of the NJDOE targets. Both Cherokee and Seneca missed one indicator of success on the High School Proficiency Assessment for the subgroup students with disabilities.
With one of the highest graduation rates among districts in Burlington County and statewide, all four schools in the Lenape Regional High School District met 100 percent of the benchmarks for graduation and post-secondary performance.
The district’s 2012–2013 average graduation rate was 95.83 percent, an increase from the 2011–2012 average of 95.3 percent. This was reflected in this year’s performance reports, with the graduation rates for all of the LRHSD high schools exceeding 94 percent, well above the statewide target of 75 percent.
According to the National Student Clearinghouse, the district’s post-secondary enrollment rate 16 months after high school is 84 percent, an increase of more than five percent compared to last year’s report.
“The increase in post-secondary enrollment demonstrates our commitment in ensuring our students are prepared for two graduations — high school and college,” Birnbohm said.
Another indicator of the district’s graduates’ success in college is high average SAT scores, which held steady at 1550 for all four high schools in a five-year analysis from 2009 through 2013. According to the College Board, a student with an SAT score of 1550 or higher is more likely to get a B minus freshmen year of college, helping to put them on a path to graduate from college.
For a second year, the four high schools did not meet two key benchmarks that, according to the Performance Reports, are indicators of college and career readiness — the percentage of students participating in PSAT and the percentage of students taking at least one advanced placement or international baccalaureate test in English, math, social studies or science.
“We addressed our low participation in the PSATs by establishing a new requirement that all college prep students take the PSAT at least once each year in grades nine, 10 and 11 beginning this school year,” Birnbohm said.
According to Birnbohm, the district is dedicating more time and resources to the PSATs at no additional cost. “We anticipate the results of this proactive program will be reflected in next year’s performance reports,” she said.
