Bernards Township reports strong elementary gains and readies for new adaptive state assessment

The Bernards Township School District presented its state assessment findings to the board, highlighting strong elementary gains in mathematics and English language arts and outlining next steps as the district prepares to field-test a newly announced adaptive state assessment.

Superintendent Miss Fox told the board that math results were “extraordinary,” noting the district posted its highest performance in grades 3 through 7 since the assessment’s inception and that the district continued to outperform the state average. The superintendent credited the results in part to the first-year implementation of the Envision Mathematics program and cited “notable gains in the areas of operations and algebraic thinking and modeling and reasoning.” She also said the district saw “record breaking proficiency rates” in grades 4 and 5 for ELA and that most elementary grades surpassed pre-pandemic levels.

District leaders identified subgroups and grades that warrant further attention: participation and performance issues in Algebra I (grade 9), declines in grade 3 and grade 9 ELA, and subgroup performance for multilingual learners, students with disabilities and economically disadvantaged students. To address those gaps, the district said it will expand tutoring at the middle and high school levels and continue daily elementary intervention blocks, collaboration with special services and data-driven monitoring.

The superintendent also notified the board that New Jersey’s Department of Education has announced a new adaptive state assessment to be field-tested in the coming days and that all districts are required to participate. "All districts are required to field test the new assessment, and for us that is this week starting tomorrow in most of our buildings," Miss Fox said, calling the field test both a logistical exercise for staff and an opportunity for students to see the new platform prior to spring testing.

On science results, the presentation noted increases in grades 5 and 8 and a slight decline in grade 11, with the caveat that only about 30% of juniors participated in the science assessment, making conclusions about grade-11 performance difficult. The board and curriculum committee emphasized the need to consider curriculum scope and sequence relative to testing topics.

The board accepted the superintendent’s report; committee minutes and the full assessment report were linked in the agenda for further public review.