Schools

Township School Report Card Unfair, Education Association President Says

Angel McDermott thinks Gloucester Township is penalized for disadvantaged students.

The news that seven of 11 township schools received a failing grade in state education evaluations this month was not taken lightly by district administrators.

Interim Superintendent John Bilodeau said the district will implement the Star  program in all three Gloucester Township middle schools in an effort to improve performance. The program evaluates each student individually and measures progress that way.

He said the cost of the program had prevented the district from implementing it in all three schools previously but he fought for it now to address achievement shortcomings.

Find out what's happening in Gloucester Townshipwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

But the president of the township education association, the teachers union, thinks the township isn't getting a fair deal from the state in student assessments.

"The way they calculate whether you make your target or not, for lack of a better word, is unfair," Angel McDermott, president of the Gloucester Township Education Association said. "The different categories they look at, socioeconomic, disadvantaged, special needs, ethnicity; if you have a special needs minority child who comes from a socioeconomic background that is limited, that child counts three times. That's how the state devised it.

Find out what's happening in Gloucester Townshipwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

McDermott says she takes test scores "with a grain of salt."

"A student comes in and is not feeling well, you don't know what happened the night before, maybe they don't even care, and it's a snapshot of them on that one day," she said "When you look at a class from September to June you get a better picture of the progress the kids make than that one week in May when the they sit down and take this test."

McDermott says she knows there has to be some way to measure student progress and she hopes a new system the state will begin to implement next year will be a fairer way to measure.

"I know that the new evaluation system levels the playing field a little better, where students are compared with other students around the state who perform like they do," she said. "Then look at them a year later to see what kind of growth they made compared to their peers. That socioeconomic student that makes us partially proficient may have gained 10 points, in which case that child has progressed and that's not taken into account now. As the school system evolves, you'll see a lot of difference when you look at that state report card."


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here