On Friday news broke that Acting Education Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan would be exiting the Department of Education in February.  The news was dumped on Black Friday when no one was paying attention but today Allen-McMillan informed the State Board of Education of her decision and Gov. Murphy issued a two-sentence statement thanking her for her service.

Why is she leaving? No one knows for sure, although NJ Globe referenced “a sometimes rocky relationship with the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teacher and public employee union.” Another possibility could be the release of state standardized test scores, scheduled for public presentation at the next State Board of Education meeting on December 6th.

At that meeting, say DOE insiders, New Jersey will learn that reading proficiency for third-graders, based on NJ Student Learning Assessments (NJSLA) has not budged since last year: 42% of third-graders were reading at grade level in spring 2022 and 42% were reading at grade level in spring 2023. This is in spite of almost three billion dollars in COVID emergency funding from the federal government intended to help kids catch up. (Third-grade proficiency is essential for future academic progress: as the old saw goes, in grades K-3 you learn to read and in grades 4-12 you read to learn.)

Next week the public will also see the results of another assessment called Dynamic Learning Maps (DLM), which are “specific statements of knowledge and skills linked to the grade-level expectations identified in the Common Core State Standards.”  While the presentation next week will not offer comparisons to last year (or any other year for that matter), it will show 28% of third-graders are “at target” or “advanced” in mastering reading. The highest scores were achieved by eleventh-graders, of whom 33.4% are “at target” or “advanced.”

Math scores from last spring on the DLM are slightly better: while seventh-graders dropped very slightly in math proficiency, other grades showed improvements ranging from 0.5% for third-graders to 6.4% for geometry students. 

If you factor in all NJSLA results, reading proficiency rose by 2.4%, math proficiency rose by 2.2%, and science proficiency rose by 1.7%.

Yet the achievement gaps are still gulfs.  There is a 46.9% achievement gap between Black students and Asian students in reading and a 56.4% gap in math. The ga[ between economically-disadvantaged students and all NJ students is 18% in reading and 20% in math.

The State Board and the public will also hear about results on the test required for high school graduation called the  NJGPA, which measures student proficiency in math (Algebra 1 and Geometry) and reading (10th grade English Language Arts). During its pilot year in 2022, 60.6% of students failed the reading portion and  50.5% failed the math portion—politically unacceptable results. At Allen-McMillan’s urging, the State Board lowered the passing scores and changed the definition of a NJ high school diploma from “college-career ready” to the tautological “high school graduation ready.”  With the lowered benchmark in place, last  spring 80.5% of NJ‘s graduating students passed 10th reading and 55% passed Algebra 1 or Geometry.. 

As with the NJSLA, the gaps are huge: 95% of Asian students, 88% of white students, 69% of Hispanic students, and 68.5 of Black students meet the graduation requirements in reading; 87.5% of Asian students, 68% of white students, 36% of Hispanic students, and 30% of Black students meet requirements in math.

The draft presentation concludes by noting there has been an increase in proficiency since last year; that teachers have given students emotional, social and academic support; that the NJ Partnership for Student Success is expected to raise student achievement (at October’s meeting, Allen-McMillan acknowledged the DOE had only hired 10% of necessary tutors); and students will require additional help for “the next couple of years.”