Roman squares off with Lyles as Jersey City BOE reveals PARCC results

Jersey City Board of Education Vice President Marilyn Roman picked a fight with Superintendent of Schools Dr. Marcia Lyles over her presentation of the unofficial state PARCC test results, which was made to the board and the public at Thursday’s meeting.

[fve]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44KdNYcIwFY[/fve]

Before Lyles shared any of the results, she explained that the New Jersey Department of Education used the benchmarks of the national assessment exams such as the SAT, ACT and the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) for language arts and mathematics readiness.

According to the data, 72 percent of the students in 8th grade who took the Algebra I test passed.

The data presented a mismatch for students in the 9th grade, since only 18 percent met expectations for PARCC exams – but 67% did receive a “C” grade or better.

This suggests that the results are not in a straight alignment.

In language arts and literacy, the Jersey City school PARCC performance showed that the gap between state and the district has lowered.

McNair, Liberty and Infinity High Schools scored above the statewide average.  The three schools also scored above average in mathematics.

For self-contained middle schools, it was Academy 1 and Middle School No. 4 that scored above the statewide average for language arts and mathematics. Meanwhile, Middle School No. 7 scored above statewide average in Algebra 1.

For K-5, Public School No. 3 and Public School No. 16 scored above statewide average in grades 3, 4 and 5 with level 4 in language arts. PS 6 scored higher that state in mathematics.

For K-8, it was PS. 5, PS. 11 in grade 4 and PS 17 in grade 3 that scored above statewide average for language arts.

In mathematics, it was PS. 5, grades 4 and 5 and PS. 11, grades 5 and 8th that scored above state average.

In closing her presentation, Lyles pointed out that this is drafted version and more accurate numbers will be available in January. The State did not provide disaggregated numbers in terms of sub groups the beginning of the year.

“However because it is so critical for us to be very clear about who is achieving and at what stage we felt that we wanted to start that disaggregation, [to] start those conversations with our schools,” stated Lyles.

Shortly after the presentation and Jersey City Board of Education President Vidya Gangadin opened for board comments and BOE Vice President Marilyn Roman shared her discontent with the data.

“I would like to suggest the superintendent to send us a copy of this. We should have had it before the meeting. So I would appreciate it if tomorrow morning, you would send each of us a copy of the PARCC results.”

Lyles replied that’s she would provide the results at the end of the next business day because “I need to do a final, final, final, proof.”

Roman interrupted, “We don’t need you to do a final anything, we just need to see what you just pit up here for the public.”

Ms. Roman reminded Lyles, “you work for us and we need to be able to have that information.”

“We don’t need these presentations. The kind of presentations we need is where this board gets all the paperwork ahead of time, we review all of it and then we sit down with you and we ask the questions because now we are at least knowledgeable about what’s in the report.”

After the exchange, Lyles told the members of the board that the PARCC presentation and results will be emailed the same evening.