The Eastern Camden County Regional School District has released its district goals for the 2016–2017 school year.
This year, the district has five goals it hopes to achieve related to improving participation and performance rates for future Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career exams, reducing student lateness, reducing freshman course failures and examining the district’s internal controls.
In the district’s attempt to raise PARCC participation rates, director of curriculum, instruction and professional development Robert Cloutier said the district would continue to emphasize to students and parents the importance of PARCC data in terms of schools ratings and other rankings.
“We’re aware of other schools that really did a nice job of convincing their parents and students that the test wasn’t just a graduation requirement, but it really is about the reputation of the school as well,” he said.
However, Cloutier said PARCC participation rates among next year’s 11th-grade students at Eastern are of particular concern as students who have taken AP English or a math above the level of Algebra II are exempt from those portions of the PARCC exams.
According to Cloutier, that’s expected to be somewhere 50 to 70 students, along with other students who will be exempt after having taken the SAT or other tests.
However, Cloutier said PARCC participation rates are also expected to rise in the coming years due to recent actions of the NJ Board of Education.
The state BOE is in the process of voting to finalize graduation requirements for the classes of 2020 and 2021 — the students now in grade eight and grade seven.
Under the state BOE proposal, students of the class of 2020 would need to at least attempt all possible PARCC exams before being allowed to meet their graduation requirement through other tests such as the SAT. For students of the class of 2021, PARCC tests would be the only exams available to meet their graduation requirement.
“I’m a little concerned about juniors, but we’re definitely going to see much improvement with the ninth and 10th graders, and we’re going to try with the juniors,” Cloutier said.
Cloutier said the second goal related to PARCC is to increase performance rates by using the PARCC data in an effective way to help teachers with instruction. Cloutier characterized PARCC as “much more difficult” than the former High School Proficiency Assessment tests it replaced, and so Cloutier said teachers also need help to understand the PARCC test better.
Cloutier said the district is going to be working to get better data from matching released test items and individual performance scores.
For the goals related to student lateness, Eastern Principal Robert Tull said the district hopes to reduce student lateness over the next three years by 10 percent from the 2015–2016 lateness total. Tull said the district would put new prevention mechanisms in place to when students begin to arrive late too many times, and the district would also work to attack the “culture of lateness” in which many students find themselves.
In regard to reducing freshman course failures, Superintendent Harold Melleby Jr. said the district recognizes students can have a difficult time transitioning to Eastern from the smaller, more nurturing environments typical of middle schools.
As such, Melleby said the district would also work on intervention programs if it appears the grades of a freshman student are slipping, with the overall goal of reducing freshman course failure over the next three years by 50 percent from the 2015–2016 total.
“Getting the students off to a good start in ninth grade really helps them be successful, and although we don’t have a large dropout rate, that should be lowered as well,” Melleby said.
In regard to the district’s internal controls, district business administrator and board secretary Diana Schiraldi said the district wanted to set up checks and balances and procedures to ensure district assets are used properly according to state regulations.
To achieve that goal, Schiraldi said the district would review its board policies, the district’s standard operating procedure manual, the district’s staff manual and the district’s student activity handbook to ensure all of the procedures reflect current regulations.
If there’s a need for modification or improvement, the district would then update the policies and manuals and communicate any changes to those they would affect.
