State School performance reports are now interactive
By: Mary Ann Koruth
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey
..... An Online makeover has brought much-needed polish, detail and some interactive coolness to New Jersey;s school performance reports - making for clearer answers when you want to check on your local school's math and English test results on state assessments.
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The state Education Department's interactive Online site also shows how many teachers each school employs, and whether each high school has a high graduation rate or a high dropout rate.
..... There are SAT performance trends, data on discipline problems and how much each school spends per pupil, and filters showing demographic enrollment trends for low-income migrant and military families each year and how that compares to the rest of the district.
..... The new reports were redesigned with the goal of "improving transparency in performance data so that everyone, from educators to families to policymakers, has a shared understanding of progress and where additional support is needed," state Education Commissioner Lily Laux said in a statement to NorthJersey.com .
..... That included providing "usable data to help communities answer practical questions about student progress, program effectiveness, and resource use, and to do so clearly and in time to inform decisions," he said.
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It's many of the same data categories but with new details, in an interactive format with Excel-style charts.
..... A "staff" feature shows exact numbers for teachers and degrees in a detailed breakdown - how many nurses, PE and math teachers, for example, there highest academic degrees, and the average number of years teachers have spent in a district, often a sign of how attractive it is to them.
..... The redesign also includes graphs showing up to five years of test scores by school and by district.
..... That means's it is immediately obvious that a score of 86% on the 2024-2025 NJSLA English test by eight graders in Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgewood, for instance, is not as high as it was in 2021-2022, at88%. But it is a huge improvement from 2023-2024, when the average score was 74.8%.
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Also, graduation rates and chronic absenteeism rates are easy to compare over the past few years in the new design, with some detailed data being presented for the first time.
..... Drop-down filters and interactive dashboards let users generate snapshots of where each school stands compared with its district and state averages, showing trends across years, student groups and grades.
..... Users still cannot compare one school to another without viewing their profiles separately, and performance snapshots have to be downloaded as PDFs for sharing and printing.
..... The redesign was part of the state's transition to the New Jersey Statewide Longitudinal Education Data System part of a new platform to streamline data-sharing with the state by districts.
..... "New Jersey's School Performace Rep rots provide a critical starting point for learning how our schools, districts and state education system are serving our students," Laux said in a public statement.
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"We are commuted to continually improving this resource by making it clearer and easier to use," she said, to facilitate "meaningful discussions about how to efficiently deliver an excellent education to every student, in every ZIP code across the state."
How did your school do?
..... Visit nj.gov/education.spr to see the state's interactive education reports.