Bayshore Jointure $64,000 Question ?

The last Board of Education meeting featured a large number of upset parents that came out because a rumor that the Bayshore Jointure Learning Center was not going to have it’s lease renewed by the Matawan Aberdeen Regional School District. The CPMA has heard from some of the parents that the the information was leaked from board members. When we have absolute proof we will name them.

The CPMA empathizes with these parents and we think it is despicable that certain members would play on the fears of parents of special needs children for political purposes to make Dr. O’Malley look bad.

There is an article in the Independent in which Bayshore Jointure Commission Superintendent Dr. Arthur Waltz says the cost of a student in the program is $32,500. He also states that our District has 19 students in the program.

Well 19 x $32,500 = $617,500

It was mentioned in the minutes of the Matawan Aberdeen BOE meetings that the district’s payments to the Bayshore Jointure totaled $1.2  million a year?

$1.2 million - $617,500 = $582,500

What is the extra $582,500 being used for, or why are our local students costing $64,000? That is almost twice what other district’s pay. Why?

The CPMA strongly supports the early learning center but we want to know why it is costing our District an extra $582,500? Are we subsidizing the cost? How long has this been going on? It is not fair to our children and our taxpayers. The CPMA believes the time has come to get a full accounting of what the Bayshore Jointure spends and what is the Matawan Aberdeen fair share. Time for an audit.

District program helps college-bound seniors

From the Independent Newspaper

District program helps college-bound seniors

Mat-Ab Reg'l H.S. plans for bio-med, arts academies

BY ERIN O. STATTEL Staff Writer

ABERDEEN — Parents and students in the Matawan-Aberdeen Regional School District can expect to see some changes in the new school year, particularly at the high school.

Seniors who are college bound will be using new software to help narrow down their college searches, said Barbi Siegel, director of student personnel services/assistant principal at Matawan Regional High School.

"Students in grades nine through 12 have access to software called Naviance," Siegel said at the Aug. 25 Board of Educationmeeting. "They were mailed initial passwords for students and parents. The program offers a college search, a scholarship search, a career inventory piece and a personality test to point them toward careers and what schools offer those majors."

During his presentation at the Board of Education meeting, Superintendent Richard O'Malley announced that plans call for the high school to have learning academies that focus on biomedical education and the visual and performing arts.

Margaret DeLuca, director of secondary school accountability, said that the academies would not be in place until the 2009-10 school year.

"We are looking to implement one academy for the biomedical field and an academy for the performing arts field," DeLuca said in an interview last week. "Currently, we have a committee of teachers who are looking into this, and we will be looking at comparable programs in the area to model these on."

DeLuca added that the biomedical academy at Freehold Borough High School is a program that the district would evaluate.

Siegel comes from the East Windsor Regional School District and began working with the Matawan-Aberdeen Regional School District on July 1.

"I had experience with the program and I will eventually do a demo at a Board of Educationmeeting," Siegel said. "It is currently accessible via the district's Web site."

Siegel said she hopes the program will help students make the right choices and get parents more involved in the college selection process.

"I hope it will get parents more interested, but I also hope it helps students make the right decisions," she said. "For so many students, after a semester away, they are back home and they don't go back to school, so all that money is wasted and so is their potential. You just want to help them make the right decisions."

As part of encouraging college-bound seniors, Siegel held a two-day summer workshop to help high school seniors hone their application skills.

"For two days we taught them how to sign on to Naviance to get a jump-start on using the program," Siegel explained. "I had an English teacher present to help them with college essays, and we had some prep work for them for the SATs and ACT tests."

O'Malley also announced at the meeting that the district would see an emphasis on goals and achievements this year.

During his presentation at the Board of Education meeting, O'Malley cited a number of added educational initiatives for the high school in the upcoming school year.

"We are putting more focus on the standardized tests this year," O'Malley said. "We reviewed [standardized testing] results all summer."

Seniors will begin preparing for the HSPA, or the High School Proficiency Assessment tests, that are mandatory for high school students in the state of New Jersey in September, while the juniors will prepare for them from November through February.

According to the 2006-07 New Jersey School Report Card, Matawan Regional High School pupils achieved approximately 70 percent total proficiency in the mathematics portion of the test. Compared to the results from 2005-06, there was a 10 percent decrease in this area. Students' total proficiency in mathematics was at 80 percent in 2005-06.

O'Malley said that in-class consultants have been hired to aid teachers in teaching material to students and that the district would be developing quarterly assessments.

"We have a pretty rigorous curriculum in place, and we have an aggressive math program now," O'Malley said. "Some districts only go after one, but we are implementing a two-year algebra program and second- year geometry in the middle school."

Resident Joey Warren questioned the superintendent on just how the administration plans to measure students' success with the new goals and curriculum in place.

"I guess I am looking for something measurable, some way for students' success to be measured against these goals," he said during the public comment portion of the meeting.

"You and the state want me to measure them with standardized testing," O'Malley answered. "We will use the HSPAs and AP [advanced placement] classes, and these new academies, too. Kids today want to have a different path of where they want to go. Every kid should and can pass the HSPA. We want everyone to pass and have the opportunity to take AP classes. We want the students to get on the path that will get them to the next step in life."

Erin O. Stattel can be reached at estattel@ gmnews.com.

Matawan-Aberdeen schools try new tests

From the Independent Newspaper

Matawan-Aberdeen schools try new tests
Tests will track progress of students in grades 3-8
BY ERIN O. STATTEL Staff Writer

ABERDEEN - The Board of Education has approved a new computerized student assessment program to be implemented in the Matawan-Aberdeen Regional School District this fall.

A unanimous vote at the June 30 board meeting will allow a $26,000 program, offered through Northwest Evaluation Assessment, to aid teachers with curriculum development.

"The tests will be administered four times throughout the school year to grades three through eight," explained Richard O'Malley, superintendent of schools. "For the first two weeks of school in September we will be administering the tests."

According to the Web site, the Northwest Evaluation Assessment (NWEA) is a nonprofit organization that partners with school districts and education agencies throughout the country.

The testing NWEA will provide is Measures of Academic Progress, or MAPs. According to the Web site, the assessments are computerized adaptive tests that accurately reflect the instructional level of each student and measure growth over time.

"I have been talking with Dr. O'Malley about exactly how the teacher will implement the assessment into the classroom, and the trend in education is toward differentiation of curriculum to meet children's needs," Board of Education President Patricia Demarest said last week.

"He explained that the results of the assessment will enable the teacher to quickly put the students in groups by the skills areas that they are ready to learn. Having the children already in groups ready to learn skills aligned to state testing should improve instruction by allowing for more time in targeted skill areas."

According to NWEA, the MAPs measure what students have learned during the course of the school year, identify where instruction is lacking, assess academic achievement over time, and place new students into the correct programs.

"I have been researching benchmark tests for a while now," O'Malley said. "I have seen it done elsewhere with success and I like it because it tests the individual on content, showing growth about each individual kid. " When asked if the newassessmentswere in response to the district's scores on other state tests, O'Malley said it was for a reference point.

"I want a good indication of where each kid is instead of us teaching to the test," O'Malley explained. "We need rigorous curriculum with the right instruction and then these tests will help us measure how it is affecting the students. It is like a circle and it shows growth."

Matawan-Aberdeen students' scores on state tests were a cause for concern when parents assembled at a spring Board of Educationmeeting. Since then, the district has made changes in personnel, emphasizing instruction and accountability.

"The NWEA MAPs will cover math and language arts only," O'Malley explained.

Math is one of the subjects that the district is focused on right now, said new Matawan Regional High School Principal Michelle Ruscavage in an interview in June.

"We want our middle school students to take higher-level math classes like an algebra course, so they are better prepared for precalculus and trigonometry," she said. "Hopefully, we can review our entire program curriculum to raise standards across the board."

O'Malley explained that the cost of the test, which will be $26,083 for the district, is approximately $13 a student and includes professional development and technology setup.

Demarest agreed on the efficiency of the tests, adding, "In addition, if a child is going to be taken out for additional help, the data will help determine exactly what skills should be focused on."

Former Matawan-Aberdeen Administrator becomes BOE Member in Middletown

Read the story here:

http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080808/NEWS01/808080515/1004

Excerpt:

Skelton said he resigned because of a lack of cooperation from the Matawan-Aberdeen Regional Board of Education when he requested an office manager for the school. His resignation was rescinded by the board in January 2001, and an office manager was hired.

Now for the rest of the story:

Mr. Skelton wanted to be paid back unused vacation & sick pay which incuded time that he would have accrued since he left the district 16 years earlier, even though he did not work in the district at all during that timeframe. The Board of Education in 2001 settled on an $84,000 bonus, and the office manager. After getting all of that compensation Mr. Skelton left the job after a year. Nice deal for Mr. Skelton. Bad deal for the taxpayers.

Members on the current Matawan Aberdeen board who were on the board at that time:

Barbato Voted YES

Zavorskas Voted YES

Donaghue Voted NO

More Testing ?

According to this Asbury Park Press story, the district is adding a new battery of tests to support RTI.  The tests are provided by the Northwest Evaluation Association. We hope that it works, and provides useful feedback. If it is true that will be in sharp contrast to the colossal  ($24 thousand )waste of money the board spent under the former superintendent on Pearson Inform; which they were never able to get working.

Think that good grades in High School mean alot...

..Think again...

HIGHS HITTING A LOW
US STUDENTS FLUNKING THE GLOBAL TEST
By MELISSA KLEIN

June 1, 2008 -- More Americans are graduating from high school this year than ever before - but our grads are failing to make the grade compared to their foreign counterparts, according to a slew of new reports.
As students in China and India are attacking calculus and physics, Americans are focused on football games and Facebook, experts say - and test scores prove it.

* The United States' high-school graduation rate was No. 1 among developed countries in the 1960s; it dropped to 21st out of 27 in 2005.

* American 15-year-olds ranked 25th in math literacy and 21st in science in the most recent comparison of developed countries.

* They fell near the bottom in problem-solving skills.

* Almost 60 percent of Ph.D.s in engineering awarded in the United States every year go to foreign students.

"It's not that our educational system is getting worse," said Bob Wise, author of "Raising the Grade: How High School Reform Can Save Our Youth and Our Nation."
"It's that a lot of others are concentrating and focusing and working harder and faster and stronger."
Wise, a former West Virginia governor who is president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, said the United States now has to worry about high-paying, high-skilled jobs going overseas, not just low-paying ones.
"If education abilities and educational outcomes are rising in other nations as fast or faster than ours, then that, over a number of years, spells real problems," he said.
Mark Bauerlein, an Emory University English professor, said students have migrated from reading books to reading text messages. He documents the effect in his new book, "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future."
Professors complain it's harder to assign students novels over 200 pages, Bauerlein said.
"They just don't have the rhythm in their lives to sit down in a chair and read uninterrupted for two hours," he said. "The cellphone buzzes; the BlackBerry dings an e-mail coming through."
The disparity in the preparedness of foreign and American students is highlighted in the new documentary "Two Million Minutes."
Teens in India and China are seen clocking nine-hour school days or attending tutoring sessions and classes on Saturdays, while students at a highly regarded Indiana high school have plenty of time for TV, part-time jobs and goofing off.

See a preview of "Two Million Minutes"

New Superintendent

The district has a new superintendent. On Monday the BOE appointed Dr. Richard O'Malley. The CPMA wishes him well. We know some people did not like the board spending 18k on a search. No search was done when our former superintendent was hired, and he raised the budget 17 million dollars in 5 years. What were the results? We hope Dr. O'Malley will do better with academic performance. Here is the link to the Asbury Park Press article.


http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080212/NEWS01/802120358

New School Leader?

According to this link to the Independent newspaper. The Board of Education is close to picking a new superintendent of schools.

http://independent.gmnews.com/news/2008/0206/Schools/017.html