The State of the District Report was presented to attendees at the Tuesday, Oct. 17 Board of Education meeting.
The Tuesday, Oct. 17, Moorestown Township Board of Education meeting provided those in attendance with an update on the “State of the District” with a presentation encompassing test scores, graduation rates and other measurable areas of student achievement.
Superintendent Scott McCartney said providing the public with an update on the state of the schools is a requirement of the state’s Quality Single Accountability Continuum criteria. McCartney said the district every year submits a Statement of Assurance, which requires the district to go back and self-assess on areas such as facilities, personnel, finance, processes and other criteria.
“This year, the school district is potentially up for what we call full QSAC monitoring, which would be site visits and looking at all of those components in a much more detailed process,” McCartney said.
McCartney said the goal in compiling the state of the district report is to get a sense of where the district is in terms of state assessments. He said throughout the school year, the district looks at the data, analyzes and uses it to develop future programming.
“Overall, the state of the school district is strong,” McCartney said.
Carole Butler, director of curriculum and instruction, walked those in attendance through a condensed version of the data the district has compiled.
Butler said for the past two years, 100 percent of students in Moorestown High School’s graduating class met their graduation assessment requirements, and Moorestown was the only school district in Burlington County that did not not need to submit student portfolios for state approval toward graduation.
In language arts, third through 10th grade saw PARCC scores that were above both the PARCC consortium and state average scores. PARCC scores were generally higher in writing than reading, which Butler said can be attributed to continued work on improving students’ writing aptitude.
For third through fifth grade and seventh through ninth grade, the focus moving forward will be on increasing vocabulary through reading passages. Sixth graders will be reading informational text.
Butler said for the older grades, the district turned to PSAT data because 99 percent of students are sitting for the exam. Based on that PSAT data, the district’s area of focus for grades 10 and 11 will be reading words in context and expression of ideas in writing.
In terms of math, every grade and high school course scored above the PARCC consortium and state average scores with third through eighth grade showing an increase in their scores.
Moving forward, the district’s areas of focus for third through seventh grades will be on mathematical modeling and application. At the high school level, the district wants courses to focus mathematical reasoning while students in kindergarten through fifth-grade courses will focus on strengthening problem-solving skills.
In science, Moorestown Township Public Schools outperformed its District Factor Groups (a cluster of school based on socioeconomic status) by 1.3 percent, and the fourth-grade group continued to outperform its DFG group as well. However, Butler said the NJ ASK test is changing come spring with fifth-, eighth- and 11th-grade students getting evaluated. She said the new tests have not been written yet and no test dates have been set.
Butler said an area of particular importance to the district is ensuring that students find the right fit when applying to colleges.
“We work really hard in making sure that when students apply for colleges, they’re applying to a college that meets their needs, their families financial needs, and they finish out their four, five years in the school they start in,” Butler said.
She said Moorestown has a 95 percent success rate of students staying at the college where they started as compared to the national average of 82 percent.
Following her presentation, Butler thanked the “group effort” that goes into ensuring students continue to excel academically, athletically and in all other areas.
“We are a strong district,” Butler said. “We do perform very well.”
The State of the District report can be found in its entirety on the district homepage at http://www.mtps.com/.
