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Schools

Fair Haven Board of Education Discusses New Statewide Testing System in Schools

New testing system will rank students numerically into ten tiers.

The Fair Haven Board of Education discussed new testing standards that will rank students on a on a Statewide level at its regular meeting Wednesday night at 8:00p.m. in the Knollwood Media Center on Hance Road.

Partnership of Assessment Readiness for College and Career (PARCC) is a computer based test administered on a quarterly period that eliminates the conventional rankings of proficiency and ranks students based on numerical standings in the state, said Superintendent Kathleen Cronin.

"Students will be ranked in numbers by grade level beginning with number and going on from there, then they will be spilt into ten tiers," Cronin said.

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A major concern was that not all rooms in every school are equipped with wireless access, Cronin said.

The solution to the voiced concern was that each grade level is tested at the same but every grade is not tested at the same time, "The first grade will be tested on a different day then the third grade and so on, but the third grade in Fair Haven and the third grade in Little Silver will be tested at the same time,"  said Cronin.

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This will eventually lead the way for merit-based compensation for educators, Cronin said. "Teachers won't be able to say they don't have the top students in their class, each student will be judged in their tier."

Students are in a way trapped inside their horizontal tier but they can move into different tiers, she said.

Even though parents will not be able to see proficiency level, they should be able to see growth within tiers, Cronin said

Teachers will have to log student scores in NJ SMART, an online database, which with three to four years of data, administrators should be able to see trends.
The database will also require teachers to post their certifications and qualifications and will help administrators determine if teachers are qualified to teach certain subjects, she said.

By 2013, the school will be able to evaluate trends within classes and students, Cronin said.

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