State Says Middle Township School District Has Improved

DOE Releases 2008 NCLB Report and 2008 DINI List
TRENTON — According to the state Department of Education, Middle Township School District and 19 others statewide are no longer in need of improvement.
The public accountability report required under the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) for all New Jersey schools is now available on the state Department of Education Web site at http://education.state.nj.us/rc/nclb08/, DOE officials announced Wednesday, July 1.
NCLB requires state education departments to publish school, district and state report cards that include the status of adequate yearly progress (AYP) measurements, attendance and dropout/graduation rates, student assessment data disaggregated into subgroups, and information on “highly qualified” teachers.
All the information on the NCLB report has been previously made available to the districts and has been publicly released by the department at various times during the past 12 months.
The federally-required report released today is different from the New Jersey School Report Card, required under a 1995 state law, which is released in February each year. The New Jersey report card also contains information about individual schools’ environment, students, student performance, staff, and district finances.
DOE officials also announced that 39 New Jersey school districts were designated as being “In Need of Improvement” for the current school year under NCLB. Last year, 53 districts held that designation. Previously, 60 school districts were “In Need of Improvement” in 2006 and 63 school districts were similarly designated in 2005. A chart listing the 2008 Districts In Need of Improvement (DINI) and their status is available at http://www.nj.gov/education/title1/accountability/ayp/0809/.
Districts on the list were previously informed about their designations and offered the opportunity to appeal the determination. Because the New Jersey Department of Education is in a transition period due to the new state assessments in grades 5-8, SINI (Schools In Need of Improvement) and DINI designations were delayed this year.
Districts that made AYP for two years in a row in all content areas and were removed from the DINI list are Atlantic City, Northern Valley Regional, Pennsauken, Middle Township, Belleville, South Orange-Maplewood, West Orange, New Brunswick, Perth Amboy, Neptune Township, Berkeley Township, Lakewood, North Plainfield, Plainfield, Roselle, Phillipsburg, Warren Hills Regional, Camden Academy Charter High School, the International Charter School of Trenton and New Horizons Community Charter School in Newark.
Six districts were placed on the DINI list for the first time. They are Lenape Regional, Eastern Camden County Regional, Sterling High School District, Lakeland Regional, Passaic Valley Regional and High Point Regional.
For more information on the content of this news release, please contact the Department of Education Public Information Office at (609) 292-1126.