For my comparison of NJDOE School Report Cards I chose to examine Teaneck High School and Bergenfield High School. I grew up in Teaneck(although I did not attend Teaneck High) and I currently live in Bergenfield. The two districts had a lot in common, but there were some glaring differences.
One of the first differences I noticed was the length of the school day, with Teaneck clocking in at 6 hours, 40 minutes and Bergenfield registering 6 hours, 55 minutes. I know fifteen minutes a day might not sound like much, but that adds up to one hour, fifteen minutes a week. Thinking back to my classroom days, I would have loved to have had that extra fifteen minutes a day!
One of the facts that I found surprising was the results of the HSPA test. The results in both districts were almost identical for the Language Arts test, with both districts right near 76% for proficient. The thing that jumped out at me was the Math proficiency results. Bergenfield had 61% of their school scoring in the proficient range while Teaneck only had 50% of their students scoring proficient. Since so much of the other data seemed similar, I would have thought that this range would have been closer.
Another thing that surprised me was the information concerning the AP classes and exams in the districts. Bergenfield has 25% of students in 11th and 12th grade participating in AP classes, while Teaneck only has 9% of their 11th and 12th graders enrolled in AP classes. Upon first glance at the amount of students that scored a 3 or higher on the AP exam, I was shocked to see how many more students in Bergenfield had achieved this than in Teaneck. However, when I studied the report cards further, I noticed that just about every student in an AP class in Bergenfield took the AP exam, which was not the case in Teaneck. Although Teaneck had around 80 more kids enrolled in AP classes than Bergenfield, they only had 96 students take the AP exam compared to 235 in Bergenfield.
Most of the other information on the report cards was pretty comparable. I think the report cards provide a nice basis for comparison, but I don’t think they tell the complete story of a school district.
Hi Jason,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the compliment. I can't believe I have to worry so soon. My boys are 8 and my daughter is 2!!! I have no high school in the town I live so I figured I better start now!
I guess you have a computer for every student or at least enough for a group or the labs are definitely better. I must say that as I continue along in this class I think that starting in middle school all kids should have a lap top. I hear most private schools require them. They have come down in price and now I feel like if the kids don't start incorporating them in middle school they are behind the curve.
Rosanna
Jason, Since I'm not that familar with either town I wanted to ask - before doing this assignment did you consider the two towns comparable for the most part? I do agree that the report cards don't tell the whole story but they are interesting to read, aren't they?
ReplyDeleteProfessor, they are definitely interesting to read and are something that people should pay attention too, but they cant capture the kind of teaching/learning that is taking place in a district or a classroom. Sure, they provide standardized results, but they dont tell you how dynamic a school really is.
ReplyDeleteThe interesting thing is, before the assignment, I thought that the Teaneck Schools would have way outperformed the Bergenfield ones. The towns have some similarities, but a lot of differences too, if that makes sense!