R.B. superintendent to appeal NCLB rating

The Red Bank Public Schools Superintendent said Friday she will appeal the Department of Education (DOE) finding that the borough's middle school has not met No Child Left Behind (NCLB) benchmarks for the second year.

Schools Superintendent Laura Morana said the DOE 2006-2007 statistics are incorrect and Red Bank Middle School did, in fact, achieve Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) status.

As a result, it should not be placed in a "Year 4 Corrective Action Status" as it is currently listed, according to Morana.

"There is nothing unusual about an appeal being filed," said DOE spokesman Rich Vespucci. "It's not unusual for school districts to come to us if they feel there has been a discrepancy or an error. We do review and we do make adjustments if we do conclude that's necessary. That is part of the process."

However, DOE spokesman Rich Vespucci said that while there was an inquiry from the school last year, no appeal was filed.

Middle school students in grades four and five who are categorized in the African American, Economically Disadvantaged and Total Population subgroups failed to make the AYP target in language arts literacy, according to the DOE.

Middle school students in grades six, seven and eight grouped in the Limited English Proficient, Hispanic, Economically Disadvantaged and Total Population categories also failed to make the AYP target in language arts literacy.

"One of our main goals is to address the language arts literacy instruction," said Morana of the AYP results. "We implemented a lot of strategies."

This year's improvements include a new curriculum, instructional program, language arts instructional assistants, a language arts literacy coach, a comprehensive classroom observation process, lesson planning and review, according to Morana.

"A lot of time, energy and resources have been going into developing a comprehensive language arts literacy program," said Morana.

The Red Bank Primary School, grades pre-K through three, continued its record of achieving AYP status for the 2007-2008 school year, according to DOE statistics.

R.B. Charter school, T.F. Middle School miss AYP target

The DOE found the Red Bank Charter School and the Tinton Falls Middle School did not achieve AYP status this year.

Seventy-six New Jersey schools were placed this year in "Year 4 Corrective Action Status," including the middle school and Red Bank Regional High School, which was placed in a "Year 4 Hold" status.

Red Bank Regional High School was placed on Hold status this year for improvements made from last year and did achieve AYP status.

The Hold status is a result of achieving Safe Harbor in the Hispanic student subgroup category under language arts literacy. Safe Harbor is when there is an increase in performance by at least 10 percent or more but the subgroup does not make AYP, according to Vespucci, who said making Safe Harbor is equivalent to making AYP because enough progress has been made so the school does not get penalized for moving in the proper direction.

"Due to Red Bank Regional's diverse population, particularly, with the growing number of English Language Learners (ELL) in the Red Bank community, meeting NCLB goals has been a major challenge," said Red Bank Regional High School Superintendent Edward Westervelt in an Aug. 16 press release. "We are very pleased that this year, all our hard work and extraordinary efforts have culminated in meeting the goals of NCLB."

The school has taken certain initiatives over the past five years to improve student performance, according to a press release from the school. These include providing the Source program, a four-week summer transition program for incoming freshmen, a leadership program for rising 10thgraders that encourages minority students in particular to take honors and AP-level classes, special classes for ELL students geared toward improving their writing and English skills, tutoring programs, adding more honors and AP classes, a special three-day Kaplan training session for teachers and "Puente al Futuro," a program that enrolls ELL students in college courses at Brookdale College during senior year, and if they pass those courses and meet other program requirements, they are given a full scholarship to the college upon graduation, according to the Aug. 16 press release.

This year, 346 schools were on the "Early Warning" list including Tinton Falls Middle School and the Red Bank Charter School.

For grades six, seven and eight, students at the Red Bank Charter School categorized as Economically Disadvantaged failed to make AYP in language arts literacy.

"We have had a remarkable increase in the number of students who have English as a Second Language (ESL) needs," said Red Bank Charter School Principal Meredith Pennotti. "That has taken an impact, as you would anticipate, with language arts scores, and in our case it was one class which was below proficient to effect our AYP outcome for this year."

Since the charter school, which has a total of 156 students, had achieved AYP in years previous, it is now placed on the DOE's "Early Warning" list. This means it will face no NCLB sanctions and is a way "to remind school officials that if they do not make AYP in the following year, they will be place on the NCLB Schools In Need of Improvement (SINI) list," according to the DOE Web site.

Pennotti said the charter school now receives some state assistance through Targeted At-Risk Aid (TARA) that the public school system in Red Bank receives to help ESL students.

"This money allows us to have a fulltime (ESL) teacher and add supporting programs," said Pennotti.

Other additions include designating a teacher to act as a liaison to those parents of ESL students from the Spanish-speaking community, a five-week summer program for focusing on literacy and math skills for ESL children just completing kindergarten and/or first grade, and adopting an inclusion model where ESL students are now integrated into mainstream language arts classes to expose them to the grade-level curriculum, according to Pennotti.

The Tinton Falls Middle School would have been removed from the "Early Warning" list had it achieved AYP this year, since a school must make AYP two years in a row to be removed from the "Early Warning" or SINI list, but it failed to achieve AYP status this year.

In the middle school, students in the Students with Disabilities subgroup failed to achieve AYP in language arts literacy.

"The state average for that [students with disabilities] subgroup is 33 percent and we scored 40 percent, so we are above the state average but we're not where we want to be," said Tinton Falls Middle School Principal David Hallman.

The DOE's proficiency target is 66 percent for middle school students, grades 6-8, in the language arts literacy category per subgroup.

"What we're going to do is look at those students that scored partially proficient or were in the lower range and analyze their tests scores," said Hallman. "[Then] break down the test scores to come up with the strengths and weaknesses of those students and mainly teach through their strengths to improve their weaknesses."

These statistics are still preliminary and not 100 percent official yet, according to Vespucci.

"A school district can, if they feel there is an error or disagree with a finding of ours, bring that to our attention," said Vespucci, which is what Morana has opted to do.

He continued that if there needs to be an adjustment, that would come out in the final AYP report.