A few months ago the district reported unfortunate results with respect to “graduation readiness” for last year’s juniors (this year’s seniors), where at least 32% were not graduation-ready.  I’ve not heard this discussed recently, so: what is happening to those students?

Since I’ve missed any discussion of this, I thought to look at recent history.  Given the limited information available from the state, I looked first at the class of 2023.  This involves looking at NJGPA data for juniors in 2022, when it should be noted that the test was still a field test.  Then, we’d 52% graduation-ready in ELA and 64% graduation-ready in math.  Despite this, the state reports that we successfully graduated 94.3% of our seniors in 2023.  This begs an interesting question: how did those 42+% of students achieve graduation readiness over their final year?  The more critical question is: did they achieve graduation readiness over their final year.

I don’t have the state’s data for the class of 2024, but USNews reports a graduation rate of 95%.  That graduating class, as juniors, had 87% graduation-ready in ELA and 70% graduation-ready in math.  This leaves a gap of at least 25%: how did those students achieve readiness over a single year, and – more importantly – did they all achieve readiness?

This issue of readiness begins years earlier, in the younger grades (which is why I was happy to see materials for High Impact Tutoring on the agenda), but I would think this information an important metric for our district’s success.  It should be of great interest to the board as well as the rest of us.  The administration has the data to look more closely at what happens to those students in this “not ready” gap over their final year in the district.  I urge the board not only to follow-up now, but to add this to the annual reporting provided to the board and the public.