COURT HOUSE – Recently, New Jersey education officials announced the 2016 high school graduation rates. The rates showed a slight increase over the 2015 rates, but that small increase allowed the state to inch above 90 percent.
As an aggregate rate across the entire state, the number is impressive. Not all rates are yet available nationwide, but in 2015 the state’s 89.7 percent rate ranked it in the top three states in the nation.
New Jersey which has consistently done well in national rankings, has improved six percentage points since 2011. It was in the 2010-2011 school year that states began to calculate graduation rates, in the same way, using a federally-mandated cohort methodology.
What is not the same however are the requirements each state may use as hurdles to graduation. New Jersey is among a minority of states that requires passing an exit exam or its equivalent.
For New Jersey, the numbers continue to be good across all of the categories of students.
African-American students have improved over 13 percentage points since 2011 and now stand at 82.1 percent.
Hispanic students are up over 10 percentage points at 83.4 percent. The aggregate numbers for the state also include graduation rates of 94.2 percent for white students, 96.7 percent for Asian students and 82.7 percent for economically-disadvantaged students.
County Doesn’t Show Improvement in All Schools
The numbers in Cape May County are not showing the same overall improvement. The county contains five public high schools, one of which, Cape May County Technical School, makes use of a selective admissions policy and is not comparable to the others.
In three of the five schools, rates have not increased and have dipped slightly since the 2011-2012 academic year (see High School Graduation Rates).
All three of those schools, Middle Township, Lower Cape May Regional and Wildwood, remain well below the state average.
In neighboring Atlantic County with 11 schools, all but three scored above the state average of 90 percent.
In Cumberland County, six of 10 reporting schools had rates above 90 percent.
High School Graduation Rates
| District Name | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 |
| Cape May County Vocational | 97.1 | 93.7 | 86.8 | 95.1 | 91.2 |
| Lower Cape May Regional | 81.2 | 80.2 | 78.8 | 88.5 | 80.2 |
| Middle Township | 81.3 | 80.7 | 80.2 | 83.3 | 82.4 |
| Ocean City | 95.2 | 96.9 | 95.3 | 95.6 | 99.4 |
| Wildwood | 79.1 | 77.1 | 68.8 | 78.7 | 81.1 |
Source: NJ Dept. of Education
Wildwood Catholic
Another school in Cape May County is doing well but does not show up in the state statistics because it is parochial, Wildwood Catholic High School. Graduation rates reported by the school are 100 percent but they are calculated differently than those at the public schools which use the federal formula.
At Wildwood Catholic, which like the county Technical School, draws on the entire county for its students, those few students who do not return, transfer or are not asked back for disciplinary reasons are not part of the numbers. Even if one were to include them, however, the graduation rate would be in the very high 90s.
Much of the discussion below on the PARCC tests also does not apply to Wildwood Catholic which does not make use of that test as a graduation requirement. It does, however, have students take PSATs every year as part of its college preparation process.
Pass That Test
More than just the formula for calculating graduating rates has changed since 2011.
In 2014 the state abandoned its previous graduate assessment test because too many students who passed it then went on to face remedial courses during their first year in college.
The new requirement established the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers exam, PARCC, as the graduation assessment tool.
Concern over the change was widespread resulting in a large number of students refusing to take the exam in 2015 and even the launching of a lawsuit by the Education Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union.
The lawsuit was settled in 2016, but the settlement was narrowly written largely impacting only the Class of 2016. That settlement did not change the requirements going forward, requirements that become more restrictive over time as schools approach the full implementation of the standards with the Class of 2021.
In the early years of PARCC, many more states across the nation participated in the PARCC test regimen.
In the spring of 2010, there were 24 participating PARCC states. By 2014 that number had dwindled to 14, then nine in 2016 and finally in the 2016-2017 school year the PARCC website reported only seven full-participation states, one of which remains New Jersey.
Current graduation requirements state that students must achieve a passing score, a four or five on a scale of one to five, on the English Language Arts Assessment in grades 10 or 11, as well as a passing score on the PARCC mathematics tests, at minimum Algebra I.
Today safety valves exist for students who fail to achieve the needed scores. Students can use a substitute competency test, most often the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) or American College Testing (ACT), as long as they achieve a minimum score mandated by the state.
Last, students who still do not have a path to graduation can resort to the state’s portfolio appeal process.
The portfolio process, representing a compilation of a student’s work and responses to a set of open-ended questions involves a district-level review of a student’s submission.
Test Numbers a Problem
If the Class of 2016 were faced with the announced requirements for the Class of 2021, tens of thousands of students would have had to resort to the portfolio process.
With the Class of 2016, only about 10 percent of the students scored high enough on the PARCC exams to meet the graduation requirements. Almost 50 percent of the 96,000 graduating seniors used the alternative test option to meet their requirement.
Those alternative tests will not be available in 2021.
Last year also saw over 10,000 students go the route of the portfolio process. This represented a significant growth in a process that, for several years, had been used by 2,000 or so students.
The state’s response to the numbers is that the PARCC tests are new and scores will improve over time. It is true that scores did improve overall in 2016.
Still the vast majority of students who took the exams did not achieve the needed scores and had to scramble to meet the requirement.
With the state’s overall graduation rate high, state officials seem content to give the new requirements time.
The 2016 data may not be a good predictor of eventual scores as both students and teachers adapt to the new requirements.
The new requirements represent yet another hurdle for districts already struggling to improve graduation rates. While the graduation rates for African-American and Hispanic students have improved in the state overall, they are still lower than the state’s overall average, so differences in minority representation in the student body will impact a specific school’s overall rate.
The impact of socio-economic factors on graduation also is well documented. Schools with significant populations of socio-economically disadvantaged students have to deal both with the impact of economic hardship on persistence as well as the historical tendency for students from this group to score lower on standardized tests.
As the state seeks to implement graduation standards that reflect a student’s preparedness for college or a career, the new requirements will probably remain controversial.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.
