Lawyers and Loss of Focus: Factors Likely Connected to the BHPSNJ Decline
My sixth and final email to the BOE exploring reasons connected to the Decline of Berkeley Heights Schools and How to Reverse It Last year the BOE Majority and Administration took strange and unprecedented steps in using District funding to ensure that a newly elected BOE Member and an agenda for change would fail. Before Sai’s term, concerns about the...
Culture, Data and Measurement: Possible Factors Connected to the BHPSNJ Declines
My Fifth Email to the BOE on Possible Causes for the Decline and Suggestions on How to Repair Them A disquieting aspect of the last BOE meeting was how unaware the BOE majority and Superintendent were of the declines in our proficiency. And then, more disturbing, was an attempt to make Dr. Foregger and Ms. Khanna look foolish or silly...
Possible Factors Connected to the Decline of Berkeley Heights Schools: Family Engagement
My Fourth Email to the BOE on Possible Causes for the Decline and Suggestion on How to Repair Them A tremendous body of evidence supports family engagement as necessary for successful outcomes in human services. Many studies have pointed to family engagement as leading to higher academic achievement, pro-social behaviors, and interpersonal effectiveness. In its review of 51 Studies on...
Impact of Reconfiguration & School Transitions on Students and the BHPSNJ Decline
My third email to the Berkeley Heights Board of Education on Possible Reasons Behind the BHPSNJ Decline What should have been a thoughtful and considered process on the reconfiguration of our schools turned into an obsessive, rushed campaign that sought to get FDK approved at all costs with no consideration for the future. There was already a predetermined path with...
What Happens When We Broaden The Dashboard?
Rankings and Scores Compared to 24 other High Schools and 29 other K-8’s The dashboard that we have been using includes six other schools we felt were comparable to Berkeley Heights. Families can know that the picture is perhaps even more concerning than what our dashboard depicts. When we broaden the sample to 25 schools we find that Governor Livingston...
Reassignments, Resignations and the Berkeley Heights Public School District’s Decline
The First of Several Emails I will be sending to the Berkeley Heights Board of Education Exploring the Reasons For the Decline and How to Reverse It Last week I wrote a series of emails to the Berkeley Heights Board of Education and published articles outlining the drop in proficiencies, their relation to our significant drop in the rankings, and...
Putting It All Together – Rankings, Ratings, Proficiency and Budget
Exploring a connection between proficiency, rankings and budget… I emailed the Berkeley Heights Board of Education and Superintendent the following summary (excuse typos): I would like to share with you the ratings and rankings themselves along with the Budget. I’ve written about this before and I’m pretty certain you’ve read what I’ve written, however, it didn’t seem like you had any recollection of...
What About The Mountainside Kids?
Comparison of Mountainside, Berkeley Heights and what Happens At Governor Livingston…. I decided to look at Mountainside as their residents have a vested interest in a Superintendent’s report concerning Governor Livingston. Given the different k-8 configurations between Berkeley Heights and Mountainside, in the interest of time, I decided to average out the Berkeley Heights numbers except for Science and...
Five More Snapshots of the BHPSNJ Decline
Comparisons to the other Six Schools in Our Area Based on the Superintendent’s assertion that Covid is one of the primary factors driving our declines, I decided to look at other Districts. I compared movement on proficiency across the Districts that I have been running comparisons over the past month on Budget and Ratings/Rankings. These are top-level, district-wide comparisons. The...
The Story of The BHPSNJ Decline in 5 Photos
Follow up to the 05/11/2023 BOE Meeting and Request by Dr. Foregger and Ms. Khanna that the Superintendent Address the Public’s Concerns Since the BOE Meeting on 05/11/2023, I mailed the BOE Several times on the data that appears to be driving the decline in ratings and rankings. If you recall, I emailed Dr. Varley last year with concerns about...
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