John’s Notes on the 08/10/2023 BOE Meeting Part III

On the NJGPA Portion of the 08/10/2023 BOE Meeting

At the last BOE meeting, residents might have gotten a different impression of the District’s proficiencies than reality. 

That may be because the District was required to present on the NJGPA, which only tracks rising seniors. 

BHCW has been reporting on data on all grades in all schools within the District. The reason I bring this up has to do with resident comments throughout the week that demonstrated confusion.  

One important point to note is that while the District demonstrated some improvement on the NJGPA, it comes after the state of NJ lowered what a student had to achieve on the instrument to be considered “proficient.”

I appreciated Ms. Khanna asking Mr. Nixon for a comparison using the original cut score to understand year-over-year performance better. It is also why, for the last 3 million years, I asked the District to develop its own goals on these instruments, as we should not accept better-passing rates based on lowered standards as a measure of improvement.

Again, I want to reiterate that Mr. Nixon did a decent job of indirectly addressing the concerns Dr. Varley refused to speak to, Gale Bradford rambled on about, and Pam Stanley ….. well… that’s going to take a series to try to interpret and make sense of.

As Ms. Joly stated, Mr. Nixon didn’t repeat the pathetic narrative of “our kids don’t care about testing” as an excuse and took responsibility. He also acknowledged the actual issue of the declines (again indirectly) in using the data to identify students needing assistance in passing the NJGPA. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better and refreshing to hear in a meeting that often feels filled with defective AI Marketing drones. 

I hope we do better as a District next year, as the most recent District-wide reports are highly concerning. By “better,” I mean we recoup the 52-point drop in our ranking (driven by objective measures) that occurred since Dr. Varley took the helm.

If we do, it would be because our principals and teachers acknowledge and respond to the mess this Administration and BOE Majority have created for our schools. I hope they get the support they need from those who don’t think there’s a problem.

I will publish my second article on how to repair the declines later next week.

Articles on BHPSNJ Proficiency

Articles on BOE Agendas and Meetings