It is entirely possible that you might have heard that the NJ Department of Education has published a new report on the progress that school district's make each year. In the past this report was found in the School Report Card... a collection of data that included everything from staff attendance to test scores to computer numbers and many, many bits of information about the school.
The new report, found at this web address.... http://www.state.nj.us/education/news/2013/0410pr.htm
is an amalgam of testing and demographics designed to give a district such as ours and our parents a snapshot look at the district. Well it does that and much more...
Just like a family snapshot held at a family reunion, the picture has some bright spots.. the cute kids and the smiles on their faces... and some darker moments...the "bunny ears" a brother makes over his sister's head, the red eye or the uncle in the back row who had too much to drink before the picture was snapped!
The report is there for all to see... it uses words and adjectives to describe district's across the state based on a snapshot of data... and just like the finished product in a family reunion portrait, our snapshot here at Oxford has some positives and some negatives!
One of the biggest changes in the way the report delivers information about OCS is in the new "Peer Group" that we are compared to in the report. This peer group is supposed to be comprised of schools that resemble our school in areas of demographics, in particular the percentages of Limited English Proficiency students; the percentages of students we have receiving Free or Reduced Lunch; and the percentages of students we have who are receiving special education support. The Peer Group is designed to be 30 schools who are like us in those categories and the number of students, grade span, etc... However, our "peer group" only includes 4 schools that have the same grade span of Pre-School through 8th grade... 13%! the majority of the schools in our group are 6-8 grade. In fact of the 30 schools in the report, 18 of the 30 (60%) are only 6-8 grade schools.. and that is not what, or who, we are!
Over the past seven years our district and our students have made great strides as we all work together to move Oxford Central School to a status that places us in the upper levels of student and staff performance here in our cluster, our county and in the state. There are many positive in the report and I will be discussing the report in full to anyone who wishes to here on Wednesday, May 15, at 7:00pm in the school cafeteria.
I hope to see you there...
Till next time...
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