North Brunswick presents 2024–25 NJSLA results, flags subgroup gaps and readies for new adaptive test

Mercy Chen, the district’s director of accountability and special programs, presented the North Brunswick Township School District’s 2024–25 NJSLA results at the board’s Sept. 24 meeting and highlighted persistent gaps across subgroups even as some grade levels showed improvements.

“This year we administered 6,736 tests,” Chen said, noting the count includes ELA, math and science across grades 3–9 (ELA and math) and science at grades 5, 8 and 11. She told the board the district’s average ELA scale score was higher than some prior internal reports and that proficiency bands still cluster near level three statewide; she also pointed to a notable decline in ninth-grade ELA performance.

Chen called attention to subgroup disparities: “Our English language learners continue to struggle — 61% of them scored at level one on the ELA assessment and only 2% scored at level four,” she said, and she reported large shares of students with disabilities in the lowest bands on both ELA and science. By contrast, higher-level math courses produced stronger results, with Chen reporting Algebra II cohorts among the district’s highest-performing groups.

Board members pressed Chen for explanations of several contrasts. “For eighth-grade ELA we had 58% proficient; for grade‑8 math only 4% are proficient,” one member asked, adding, “How can that gap be so broad?” Chen and other staff explained that course placement and assessment framing drive some differences: many eighth graders who take Algebra I or Geometry are not counted on the grade‑8 assessment, while the standalone grade‑8 math test reflects students not yet enrolled in higher-level math courses.

On interventions, Chen described a layered approach: districtwide tutoring funded by Title I, AVID and STAR programs in the high school, a math coach for grades 5–8, targeted interventions (tier 2 and tier 3) and continued teacher professional development on early literacy. She acknowledged attendance limits for after-school tutoring, saying morning and in‑school intervention models tend to yield better participation and that most tutoring offerings are short, targeted interventions prior to statewide testing.

The district is also preparing to analyze item-level evidence statements and benchmark data before making large curriculum shifts. “We’re going to review evidence statement tables the state puts out,” Chen said, adding that the assessment itself is changing and that staff do not want to “teach to” a test that may change format.

Staff flagged an immediate operational concern: the state is transitioning vendors for the assessment contract from Pearson to Cambium, and the new platform (Tide) may be adaptive and logistically different. Chen said she attended a vendor training and that the vendor’s logistics remain in flux. “They’re kind of building the plane as they fly it,” she told the board, describing unanswered questions about comparability to prior results, field-test scope and device/OS requirements.

District technology staff will run infrastructure trials to determine the maximum number of simultaneous testers the network can support and which devices are recommended. Chen said the planned field test will cover many grades and that the district must balance readiness for a new testing technology with a commitment to teaching standards-based instruction.

Chen and board members agreed the district will continue data-team work, MTSS supports and targeted professional development while monitoring the vendor transition and using MAP and internal benchmarks to triangulate student growth. Chen encouraged members to refer questions to the assessment webpage the district maintains and to await the state’s evidence statement releases for further action plans.