BY LAYLI WHYTE
Staff Writer

LITTLE SILVER — Red Bank Regional High School has, for the second year, failed to meet federal standards set by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.

RBR Superintendent Dr. Edward Westervelt said in an interview Monday that although he is disappointed that the school was on this year’s list of schools failing to meet the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standards, he is optimistic the school will meet the standard in the near future.

RBR appeared on the New Jersey Department of Education (DOE) list of 63 school districts that were designated District in Need of Improvement (DINI) based on their students’ 2005 test results as calculated under a formula established by the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.

Districts were judged solely on whether the aggregated test scores of the students tested in each grade in all schools within the district attained the necessary proficiency levels to make AYP for two consecutive years in both language arts literacy and mathematics, according to a DOE press release.

The standards for NCLB are progressive, and are raised each year. The final goal of NCLB is for each school in the country to have reached 100 percent proficiency by 2014.

RBR was found to have been deficient for the 2004/2005 school year in the areas of language arts literacy and math in the standardized High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA) test.

The same was true for the 2003/2004 school year, but since that was the district’s first year of falling short of the AYP, it received only a warning.

Because it has not met standards for the second consecutive year, RBR has been placed for the first time on the DINI list.

NCLB is broken down into population categories, including different minority and racial groups, as well as special education students. The report with the population breakdown is forthcoming, according to New Jersey Department of Education spokesperson Ronald Rice.

Westervelt had the information concerning the different subgroups in the school and said that one of the factors that contributed to the school being placed on the DINI list is that a new subgroup was added this year consisting of economically disadvantaged students.

Westervelt said that the subgroup was calculated by a list that the school’s business administrator sent to the state earlier this year listing the names of students who receive free or reduced lunch.

The other two categories in which the school failed to meet this year’s standards for NCLB were the participation rate for special education students and black students’ grades in the math section of the test.

For both of these categories, according to Westervelt, the mark was missed by one student.

According to NCLB regulations, 95 percent of special education students must participate in the HSPA testing each year, even those who are currently attending private schools, including those schools out of state.

“This year,” said Westervelt, “my special education director is speaking with all the schools to which we send students and letting them know that the students must take the HSPA this year.”

Although the scores for black students in the school improved overall, according to Westervelt, the school had one student more than was allowed in the nonproficient range in math.

Westervelt said that RBR has improved greatly in all categories, and that he and the entire staff are determined to be off the DINI list next year, despite certain challenges that are unique to the school.

“The reason that some schools are on that list and other high schools are not,” he said, “is because unless a school has 20 or more students in any given subgroup, that group doesn’t count in the calculations. In the special education category, a school must have 30 or more students in that subgroup.”

Westervelt said that every subgroup is counted when RBR’s scores are calculated because of its diverse population.

“A school has to have 20 or more students in one grade, not even the whole school,” he said, “because it’s just the grade at which the students are tested. It’s just junior year.”

Westervelt said that RBR has instituted several new programs over the past four years and is confident that the school’s time on the DINI list will be brief.

These programs include bilingual classrooms, requiring all students to take a full year of algebra and a full year of geometry before their junior year, aligning math and English classes with the core curriculum standards set by the state, and after-school tutoring programs for at-risk students.