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Moriarty‑Edgewood principals report midyear gains while district flags statewide testing and hardware problems
Summary
Principals presented midyear 90‑day/CQI updates showing gains in early literacy and targeted math interventions, while the district warned that statewide AMIRA scoring and local headset/microphone failures have distorted some assessment results. Administrators said internal data trackers will guide instruction.
Principals and school leaders for the Moriarty‑Edgewood School District presented midyear progress on Feb. 17, highlighting literacy and math gains in several schools while flagging assessment and hardware problems that complicate interpretation of statewide scores.
"I am Britney Lopez. I'm the dean of students at the Early Childhood Center," said Britney Lopez, presenting the ECC's midpoint continuous quality improvement report and phonological awareness results. Lopez said the preschool is "on track" with its CQI plan and reported middle‑of‑year rates well below end‑of‑year targets (for example, phonological awareness for three‑year‑olds at 47% midyear versus a 90% year‑end target) but said other measures show strong growth.
At Moriarty Elementary, Principal Luce walked the board through K–2 and 3–5 reading and math tier shifts and told the board several grade bands had moved students from higher‑support tiers toward Tier 1 instruction. "We are still working through the platform itself," Luce said, noting that a vendor rollout and level changes in the AMIRA assessment have produced data artifacts that can change reported proficiency.
Several principals and board members described technical problems with AMIRA's speech‑to‑text scoring and with headsets and microphones used by students. "A lot of our microphones were just picking up static," said Amanda Seekers, principal at South Mountain Elementary, adding the school ordered a higher‑quality set of headsets to reduce scoring errors after seeing unexpected declines. District staff and principals emphasized their local data trackers — classroom‑level checks on letter recognition, sounds and other skills — as the primary guide for instruction when statewide scores appear inconsistent.
District leadership acknowledged the assessment issues are not isolated to Moriarty‑Edgewood. The superintendent told the board the state is aware of AMIRA challenges and that districts must continue using required tools while relying on multiple data sources.
Administrators also used presentations to describe school‑level improvement strategies, including building thinking classrooms, targeted ELA coaching cycles and two‑week coaching rounds that pair observations with follow‑up meetings. Romero, Moriarty Middle School's presenter, said the school set a goal to reach 40% proficient readers and emphasized strengthening "layer 1" instruction: "We gotta become better at... taking the things that are available to us like the BTC strategies and create more engaging learning opportunities."
The board did not adopt any new assessment policy at the meeting; members asked staff to continue documenting hardware failures and to use the district's multiple data sources to adjust supports and interventions.
The board recessed the work session and later opened the regular meeting, where routine business followed.
