The district will receive $123k in state funding and an intervention team for Palmyra High School, which was ranked in the bottom two of 50 similar schools
Palmyra Superintendent Brian McBride announced the district high school will receive intervention aid following the release of the state Department of Education’s school performance reports for the 2016–2017 school year, which ranked Palmyra High School as one of the two lowest scoring of similar high schools in the state.
The DOE has granted the district $123,528 in funding to address issues related to test scores, chronic absences and the graduation rate. A crisis intervention team will meet with administrators on Feb. 16 to begin devising a solution to what the state, in accordance with Every Student Succeeds Act guidelines, has deemed a crisis in need of comprehensive support.
Largely based on results of the PARCC test, which Gov. Murphy announced will soon be done away with, McBride emphasized the data used to measure school performance is “all over the place.” That being said, the report also takes criteria such as high school graduation rates and chronic absenteeism, areas in which PHS is ranked below average, into consideration. Chronic absenteeism is defined as absences exceeding 10, not including state-recognized religious holidays, Take Your Child to Work Day and bereavement. The state mandates that chronic absenteeism rates not exceed 10 percent, and about 16 percent of PHS students were chronically absent from 2016–2017.
“Our policy is that if a parent shows up with a doctor’s note, that’s marked as an excused absence. However, the state does not track it that way,” McBride acknowledged. “Schools across the state are being hit with this, and we’re not alone in this category, but we need to take drastic steps to curtail student absences.”
Eighty-eight percent of PHS students graduate high school compared to the state’s 90 percent average, and only 66 percent of PHS students move on to college. New Jersey’s average college enrollment rate is 76 percent overall and 50 percent for enrollment at four-year colleges, while PHS students are moving on to four-year institutions at an average rate of 36 percent, according to the report.
PHS students are listed as “needing improvement” across all academic areas measured by PARCC testing, which is widely criticized by teachers and administrators as a poor indicator of school quality and college readiness. McBride and BOE president Tony Russell said PHS was also punished due to its outlier demographics, which are unique in that the high school includes seventh- and eighth-grade students. The district, which lacks a stand-alone middle school, is working toward a solution that proposes moving sixth, seventh and eighth graders to PHS to establish a junior high that would then be evaluated separately.
The BOE commissioned a $10,000 educational impact study to formulate the best strategy, which the authors of the study concluded was to move middle schoolers to the second floor of PHS. But there is disagreement among community members and administrators about the study’s findings — some parents are concerned about potential commingling between the sixth graders and older teenagers, as well as the transition from Charles Street School to PHS.
In terms of the SAT, McBride said PHS’ average score of 1037, while slightly below the state average, is significantly improving, and 50 percent of the students at PHS who took the SAT are above the 1047 state average.
Overall, McBride said, the high school was hit hard due to poor PARCC participation and performance. While the test may not be conclusively indicative of school performance, McBride said these are the standards used to measure quality for now, and the community must cooperate with them. He also called upon Palmyra to engage lawmakers on their reporting policies at the state level.
“I challenged the state on its terms of reporting, but at the end of the day, it all comes down to the PARCC,” he said. “My appeal to the community, and a very hard line my office will be taking, is that every student must take the PARCC. We’re not being represented well. Palmyra High School is not an underperforming school — it has its problems, no doubt, but I don’t think the PARCC and the state performance report are painting the picture that is Palmyra.”
Jody Demas, a trustee on the Palmyra High School Foundation for Education Excellence, echoed the board’s and McBride’s sentiments in her report.
“As a parent, I have complete confidence in you, Mr. McBride, our board, our teachers and our kids, and I know that PARCC stuff makes us crazy. But I have confidence in our governor, too, that it’s all going to go away. We know it does not measure the quality of our school or of our students,” she said.
To view the NJDOE School Performance Report and grade reconfiguration proposal, visit palmyraschools.com/ps.
