Schools

Getting Kids Extra Help to Pass State Assessment a Challenge at Monmouth Regional

The high school's superintendent said that despite rising scores, it's still a challenge getting some students to attend after school remediation.

Sometimes, just getting kids to go to school is a challenge, but at , administrators are struggling with how to get some students to stay after school for extra help preparing for the all-important HSPA test.

At Tuesday's board of education meeting, Superintendent Charles Ford said that while scores have been slowly increasing across the board, the school is looking for "new and creative ways" to help those students who don't score a passing grade to get into remediation.

Students must pass the High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA) to graduate, which measures their proficiency of reading, writing and mathematics as specified in the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards, according to the New Jersey Department of Education Web site. At Monmouth, the test is administered in March of students' junior year with retests in October and March of their senior year.

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Students who don't pass one or more sections of the test on their first try are targeted to attend after school remediation classes a few times a week. But according to Ford, regardless of the consequences involved in not attending classes -- like loss of parking passes and restriction from attending school events, "Some of the kids just don't care."

"The problem is, they don't want to stay after school," he said.

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Board members threw out a number of ideas as a solution on Tuesday, including using lunch periods, physical education class time or before school as options for the remediation. And while there are some things that are set in stone -- like the number of hours required to satisfy state PE requirements -- administrators are looking into other options.

"We're trying everything," said Ford, who noted that Monmouth was designated as having made adequate yearly progress (AYP). "But we need to hold the line."

"We're moving in the right direction," the superintendent said of the rising HSPA scores for the school. "It's easy to close the big gaps but more challenging to close the smaller ones."

"It's those kids that are still squeaking through the gap," said Ford.


Language Arts Literacy 2010 2011 Increase Total Students 87.7% 94.8% 7.1% General Ed 94.4% 98.2% 3.8% Special Ed 55.9% 77.5% 21.6% African American 87.5% 93.4% 5.9% Hispanic 90.9% 92.3% 1.4% Economically Disadvantaged 85.4% 91.6% 6.2%


Math Literacy 2010 2011 Increase Total Students 71.8% 73.7% 1.9% General Ed 79.4% 79.9% .5% Special Ed 31% 41.5% 10.5% African American 49.1% 52.5% 3.4% Hispanic 60.6% 73% 12.4% Economically Disadvantaged 60.0% 61.3% .4%


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