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Schools

Bloomfield High School Sees Uptick in SAT Scores, Drop-Out Rates

The State Department of Education releases annual school report card on Bloomfield schools.

Bloomfield parents can see how the school district compares to other towns after the state Department of Education released the 2009 to 2010 school report cards, which show tests scores, per-pupil costs, teacher salaries, number of computers, and other data throughout New Jersey.

“One of the major goals of the Department of Education is to increase school- and district-level accountability for educational progress by communicating useful information to members of the public to be used in measuring how well their schools are doing,” the report read.

Students at have seen an increase in their average SAT scores across the board with 460 in math compared to 455 the previous year, verbal scores at 451 versus 442, and essay results at 459 versus 444, according to the report.

Interim Superintendent Catherine Mozak said the high school has teamed up with Essex County College to administer a college readiness test called Accuplacer to help interested students with the SATs.

“Even before they take the SATs, they are aware of where they need improvement,” she said.

For the High School Proficiency Assessment, or HSPA, students had a slight increase in the language arts literacy portion at 73 percent proficiency, compared to the previous year at 72.6 percent. In the math section, scores went from 54.6 to 52.8 percent.

In both math and language, advanced proficiency went up three points as well. Overall, HSPA scores were slightly higher than state averages.

In the rest of the report, the high school, which has a total of 1,883 students, registered an uptick in the drop out percentage from .7 to 1.4 percent. Graduation rates surged from 86.8 to 92.4 with 50.5 percent of students going to four-year colleges and 37.2 attending two-year colleges.

For , which has 864 students, several items stood out.

The seventh grade math scores of the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge had a substantial decrease from 54 to 41.2 in proficiency. Partial proficiency increased as well from 29.8 to 42.6.

To beef up these scores, Mozak said the district is working on a revised schedule for middle schoolers so they can have more minutes devoted to math.

The rest of the scores for the NJASK for both seventh and eighth graders all had slight declines from the previous year, except for the eighth grader math results which stayed about the same.

For the remaining of the Bloomfield district, eight elementary schools and one special education program, fourth grade scores in NJASK for the whole district stood out with decreases in math and language arts literacy proficiency, from 49.8 to 37.3 in math and from 61.6 to 52.3 in languages.

Mozak said students tested in grades four to six were operating under an old, less challenging program, which explains the test scores. But the school district has beefed up the curriculum with a new, more difficult program for students below the third grade in the last three years. For example, kindergarteners now have a full day of instruction, which also started about three years ago, she said.

Also, the disparity in language scores could be explained because teachers were using different methods, Mozak said, but now everybody is using the same instructional program.

“We accept our scores are lower," she said. "Part of the problem was we didn’t have a standardized writing program.”

But Mozak said the school district is striving to continuously improve and set benchmarks for progress.

The Bloomfield school district, which has about 6,000 students, registered a total cost-per-pupil at $11,536 - less than the $15,538 state average. It is also a drop from the 2008 to 2009 per-pupil-cost at $12,760.

To read report cards for all Bloomfield schools, click here.

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