By Donald Gilpin
Princeton High School (PHS) seniors are mostly “graduation ready” — 84 percent of current 12th graders in math and 92 percent in English language arts (ELA), according to recently announced New Jersey Graduation Proficiency Assessment (NJGPA) 2024-25 test results.
Assistant Superintendent Kimberly Tew reported to the Princeton Public Schools (PPS) Board of Education (BOE) last month that math performance was up about 2 percent and ELA about .7 percent from the 2023-24 NJGPA results.
“While not statistically significant increases, we are moving in the right direction and are performing much higher than the state average (58 percent in math and 81 percent in ELA),” she said. All juniors — 381 at PHS last spring — are required to sit for the assessment as part of their graduation requirement.
For those who did not pass, there are various ways to become graduation-ready over the next nine months, and Tew is anticipating a 100 percent success rate in fulfilling alternate requirements before next June.
“We expect that all students will be able to fulfill the assessment expectations for graduation,” she wrote in an email. “The state permits multiple pathways for graduation, so students can use passing scores from other assessments like the PSATs, Accuplacer, etc. If they are unable to achieve a passing score on these assessments, we provide support classes and they complete a portfolio assessment.”
More challenging for the PPS were the “subgroup race” test results, which showed a significant increase in percentages of Black and Hispanic students passing, but significant gaps remaining among Asian students’, Black students’, and Hispanic students’ pass rates.
Ninety-eight percent of PHS Asian 11th graders achieved “college-ready” scores, 74 percent of Black 11th graders, and 50 percent of Hispanic juniors.
Tew applauded the achievement increases of 5 percent among Hispanic students and 4 percent among Black students, and she acknowledged the “persistent opportunity gaps” between the subgroups. She pointed out that those gaps existed not just with ethnicity but also with programming; for example, for lower income students on free or reduced lunch payments, students in ESL (English as a Second Language), or special education students.
“Our focus is on providing supports along the educational journey to meet students’ needs, and to continue to collaborate with staff to provide research-based instructional practices to foster student growth,” Tew wrote. “We believe that all students can experience success and that it’s the district’s responsibility to ensure that all students have services, support, and top-notch instruction to reach their potential.”
She pointed out that the district also provides English and math labs to ensure that students who did not pass the NJGPA have “the supports necessary to fulfill the assessment portion of their graduation requirement.”
Supervisors will be working with department staff on areas that need development, Tew added. In ELA she cited the areas of “constructed prose, specifically comparing and contrasting information presented through visuals or video and text, and analyzing the development of complex characters or claims.” In math there will be an increased focus on “geometry and modeling and reasoning,” and departments will be working on “improving Tier I instruction to support diverse learning needs.”
Tew will be presenting more PPS test results —New Jersey Student Learning Assessment (NJSLA) and others — in the coming month. The NJGPA will be administered again this fall for students who did not pass last spring.