Knollwood Gets Prime Academic Grade on State Performance Report

Academically speaking, Fair Haven's Knollwood School ranks among the highest in the state.

The grade four to eight school outperformed 90 percent of like schools; and, its student body is ahead of most, 91 percent, in college and career readiness, according to the new NJ School Performance Report.

Knollwood kept a the highest rating among peers in in the readiness category, outpacing them by a "very high" 82 percent. "College and career readiness measures the degree to which students are demonstrating behaviors that are indicative of future attendance and/or success in college and careers," the report said.

Under the Academic Achievement banner, Knollwood, however, went from the "very high" statewide score to faring "average" in its peer group — outpacing a lower 58 percent and meeting 85 percent of its targets.

The new report was discussed at the district's last Board of Education meeting, before the results came out. It was noted that the peer grouping, formerly referred to as district factor group, had changed, grouping Fair Haven with a different cluster of schools. The peer groupings are based on demographics, according to the report, but assign the groups based on slightly different data than before.

Board members felt that, especially since the reporting system is new, some information and result gauging may end up skewed. They had said that they were less concerned about the first year's results under the new system, until glitches are worked out, and would consider it an innaugural report and a means to retool student testing preparation.

That said, in the category labeled Student Growth, Knollwood scored "high" and came out ahead of 67 percent of schools across the state, but outpaced an "average" amount, or 44 percent, of peers. Some of those peers include Forrestdale, Spring Lake Elementary and Monmouth Beach Elementary.

According to the report, proficiency in this category measures the performance of students "from one year to the next on the NJ Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJ ASK) tests in Language Arts Literacy and Math when compared to students with a similar history of performance on NJ ASK."

School officials and parents have raised concern lately over the disparity between language arts and math standardized test results.

The results show that the students are testing mostly proficient for the past four years, ranging from 62 to 68 percent, just not as advanced proficent as in math.

For 2011-12, the school had the lowest percentile of advanced proficiency in language arts, or 17 percent, compared to a high of 24 percent the year before.

In math, the proficiency trend showed Knollwood with more than half the student body testing advanced proficient, or 51 percent in 2011-12. The lowest was 41 percent, still extremely high, in 2008-09. The trend was a steadily rising one, as language arts fell a bit.

Schoolwide performance for NJ ASK's Language Arts Proficiency category showed Knollwood outperforming 84 percent of schools statewide and 43 percent of peers while meeting a lower-than-usual 67 percent of its targets.

Still, in all, schoolwide performance in the category is at 85 percent proficiency.

In math, schoolwide performance is at 93 percent, with the school outpacing 95 percent statewide and 73 percent of peers.

For more detailed information on the report results, including a breakdown of each grade's performance, click here.

To see how other schools fared, check the NJ Department of Education's NJ School Performance Report Web site at http://education.state.nj.us/pr/nav.php?c=25;d=4570