The WW-P school district touted student academic performance during the March 9 meeting. Officials pointed out that the district has the second and third highest SAT scores in Mercer County.
South students averaging 1,835 and North students averaging 1,816 — behind only Princeton. This is despite the fact that the district is listed as the seventh lowest in Mercer County in per pupil costs.
Russell Lazovick, the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, used test scores — reported on the state school report cards issued last month — to show the district’s above-average student achievement.
He showed statistics that use national tests to measure students’ performance. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test measures student performance ever two years in reading and mathematics and measures other subjects every four years, Lazovick explained.
In the 2007 data, in fourth grade reading, New Jersey students outperformed students in 45 other states and performed on the same level as three other states. There was only one state, Massachusetts, which outperformed students in New Jersey. In math in grade 8, there were only two states that performed higher than New Jersey students.
To further break it down, Lazovick collected state data to localize the progress. In order to keep with the national study, Lazovick compiled data from the 4th and 8th grades in language arts, math, and science. He showed bar graphs for each subject and each grade.
The bar graphs included scores from all of the district factor groups — from the group containing the poorest districts to the wealthiest, where WW-P falls.
West Windsor’s district factor group performed the best. But then, Lazovick showed the same bar graphs and added a graph in each slide for West Windsor-Plainsboro, and in virtually all cases, the WW-P students scored higher than those in the J group.
Broken down even further in a district-by-district comparison, West Windsor-Plainsboro hovered near the top of the list in every case, although it never reached the top.
Still, “it’s not just how our students are passing, but how high they’re passing,” Lazovick pointed out. “This is among the best factor group.”
Board member Richard Kaye pointed out that, in the last category, WW-P was not always at the very top. However, the ones that were at the top were smaller than WW-P. “There were none that had 10,000-plus students” or the diversity that West Windsor-Plainsboro students have, he said. “Many were K-8 districts.”
