PATERSON — Fewer than 10% of Paterson’s high school seniors are ready to graduate, according to the results of a controversial four-day standardized test administered last spring.
Scores made public at Wednesday night’s Board of Education meeting showed that just 7.8% of Paterson students who took the test were deemed graduation-ready in language arts and 7.5% in math.
In comparison, 39.4% of all New Jersey students who took the test were graduation-ready in language arts and 49.5% in math.
“For me, that’s very alarming,” school board member Dania Martinez said of the district’s outcome.
Administration officials attributed the low scores to learning loss caused by remote schooling during the height of the pandemic.
“This is not a Paterson thing, this is nationwide,” Assistant Superintendent Joanna Tsimpedes said, noting that the district’s reading scores plummeted by the largest amount in three decades.
Tsimpedes said the district never got a chance “to see the fruits of our labors” from academic programs launched during the 2018-19 and 2019-20 school years.
“All the work we’ve done in the past was basically erased in a matter of two years with the pandemic,” the assistant superintendent said.
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But veteran school board member Jonathan Hodges pointed out that Paterson Public Schools was in “struggling position” before COVID-19 hit.
“These problems preceded the pandemic,” Hodges said.
The district’s report covered Paterson high school juniors’ scores on the New Jersey Graduation Proficiency Assessment, or NJGPA, which was given last spring. Amid criticism of the test earlier this year, the New Jersey Education Department decided not to use it as a graduation requirement for current seniors. There has been talk about using a revised test as a graduation standard in the future, but the Education Department has not made any final decisions about that.
Paterson school administration officials on Wednesday night also revealed the district’s scores on the Start Strong tests given to elementary school students this fall. That assessment categorized students in three groups, with the lowest-performing youngsters placed in the “strong support needed” category.
District officials said 58% of Paterson students who took the test needed “strong support” in language arts, 76% in math and 80% in science.
Tsimpedes and other officials outlined various ongoing and new programs that the district is using to improve its student scores. For example, they said, the district will require students with low grades to attend mandatory summer school in 2023, resuming a program that stopped during the pandemic.
The district also has increased the number of language arts and math supervisors assigned to individual schools and has created high school staff support teams that hold monthly roundtable discussions about ways to help struggling students.
Board members asked what factors seemed to contribute to the low scores. Tsimpedes said the highest scores tended to come from schools with “consistency in staff” and fewer student attendance problems.
The assistant superintendent said the district expects to see improvements in the future because of the academic intervention programs put in place.
“We’re doing everything we can to better prepare our staff and to better prepare our students so that we can move past this and actually see the gains,” Tsimpedes said.
Joe Malinconico is editor of Paterson Press.
Email: editor@patersonpress.com
