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Fringe
| | Posted on Sunday, January 14, 2001 - 10:54 am: |     |
In 1993, the municipal tax rate was $1.98* and the school rate was $3.80*.
In 2000, the municipal tax rate was $2.26* and the school rate was $5.98*.
One may calculte his/her personal contribution to the South Orange-Maplewood School district by multiplying the school tax rate by the current assessment.
*per hundred dollars of asessed valuation
A comparison of the rankings of "New Jersey Monthly's" Top 75 Public High Schools between 1994 and 2000 shows that Columbia High School fell from 48th in 1994 to 136th in the October 2000 rankings.
The New Jersey State Department of Education Report Card and various comparative results for the SAT and various state standardized tests will be released next month. Results will be posted here.
The "NJ Monthly" rankings are based upon several factors drawn from the Report Card.
JTL |
John
| | Posted on Sunday, January 14, 2001 - 8:40 pm: | |
Fringe:
I take it you are pointing out that the rate of spending on the schools has gone up faster than the rate of spending on the municipality, correct?
Can you let me know how the increase in our rate compares to the change in rate of most of the schools that improved and, most of those that declined? Any interesting examples?
Thanks,
John |
Fringe
| | Posted on Monday, January 15, 2001 - 1:41 pm: | |
A comparison of the rankings of "New Jersey Monthly's" Top 75 Public
High Schools in 1994 [1st number] with their position in the magazine's
2000 ratings [2nd number] with the change shown (+ for number of
position advanced between 1994 and 2000) or (- for number of positions
declined) :
1 Mountain Lakes 3 (-2)
2 Princeton 17 (-15)
3 Millburn 5 (-2)
4 Tenafly 28 (-24)
5 Northern Highlands Regional 8 (-3)
6 Ridgewood 10 (-4)
7 Chatham 26 (-19)
8 Summit 44 (-36)
9 Glen Ridge 4 (+5)
10 Montgomery 2 (+8)
11 Holmdel 9 (+2)
12 Pascack Hills 19 (-7)
13 New Providence 7 (+6)
14 Madison 13 (+1)
15 River Dell 20 (-5)
16 Westfield 15 (+1)
17 Wayne Valley 77 (-60)
18 Northern Valley Regional - Demarest 6 (+12)
19 Ft Lee 68 (-49)
20 Rumson-Fair Haven 12 (+8)
21 Academic High 1 (+20)
22 Livingston 14 (+8)
23 Ridge 21 (+2)
24 Ramapo 29 (-5)
25 West Windsor 41 (-16)
26 Glen Rock 16 (+10)
27 Gov Livingston 42 (-15)
28 Indian Hills 39 (-11)
29 Teaneck 124 (-95)
30 Whippany Park 24 (+6)
31 Northern Valley Regional - Old Tappan 31 (no change)
32 J P Stevens 53 (- 21)
33 Montville 47 (-14)
34 Watchung Hills 50 (-16)
35 Ramsey 64 (-29)
36 Hopewell Valley (now Central) 22 (+14)
37 Randolph 85 (-48)
38 Morristown 82 (-44)
39 Kinnelon 30 (+9)
40 Cherry Hill East 60 (-20)
41 Moorestown 10 (+31)
42 Sparta 71 (-29)
43 East Brunswick 62 (-19)
44 Creskill 25 (+19)
45 West Essex 40 (+5)
46 North Hunterdon 27 (+19)
47 Haddonfield Memorial 18 (+29)
48 COLUMBIA 136 (-88)
49 Pascack Valley 32 (+17)
50 Leonia 75 (-25)
51 West Morris Central 34 (+17)
52 Paramus 70 (-18)
53 Eastern Sr 33 (+20)
54 West Morris Mendham 43 (+11)
55 James Caldwell 58 (-3)
56 Ocean Twp 63 (-7)
57 Fair Lawn 92 (-35)
58 Bridgewater - Raritan 51 (+7)
59 Mahwah 35 (+24)
60 North Brunswick Twp 101 (-41)
61 Wayne Hills 59 (+2)
62 Bernards 37 (+25)
63 Highland Park 81 (-18)
64 Verona 79 (-15)
65 Pequannock Twp 52 (+13)
66 Cherry Hill West 127 (- 61)
67 Midland Park 48 (+19)
68 Metuchen 69 (-1)
69 Hanover Park 45 (+24)
70 Manalapan 105 (-35)
71 Shore Regional 55 (+16)
72 Parsippany Hills 84 (-12)
73 Voorhees 46 (+27)
74 Edison 88 (-14)
75 Parsippany 104 (-29)
If I recall correctly, the Report Card only provides the percentage of the school budget paid by the district/community, not the tax rates or average valuations. Further the Report Card does not break out the percentage by residential and commercial categories.
There used to be a report done by the ?League of Municipalities? which tried to put the data for total taxes on a comparable basis. But, as services vary so widely (eg garbage collection or pool memberships] such comparisons are nearly impossible.
At least one school board member has asked, "Would one be willing to pay the same or more in school taxes if that would guarantee a better objectively measured educational product?" Other members have been less concerned about objective outcomes.
JTL |
Kathy
| | Posted on Monday, January 15, 2001 - 3:11 pm: | |
A couple of months ago, I tried looking at the data on which NJMonthly bases its rankings. It comes from the NJ Report Card and is self-reported by the districts. (I hope that most of what follows is accurate--I'm trying to remember things that I didn't record anywhere.)
The two categories which seemed to be most responsible for Columbia's poor ranking were length of the school day and percentage of students passing the HSPT (or whatever it's called these days--the 11th grade proficiency test). But a little investigation (and I'm sorry that I haven't had the chance to do more) suggested that not all districts were reporting on the same basis.
The school day at CHS runs from 8:06 am to 2:46 pm, with a "conference period" until 3:15. Each day there are four 40-minute periods and four 50-minute periods, plus homeroom and passing times. For most students, one of the 40-minute periods is lunch. So our district reported the school day as four 50-minute and three 40-minute periods, for a total of 320 minutes or 5 hours 20 minutes.
Compared to many other districts, this is low. But spot-checking a couple of websites (I'm sorry, I don't remember what districts I looked at, although I think they were in Morris County) suggested that our school day would have been reported by them as 6 hours--in other words, they included their lunch period as part of the instructional day. Some schools reported school days as long as 6 hours 40 minutes--on our reporting basis, we'd have to add two more 40-minute periods per day to get to that! One has to suspect that they are including every minute from first bell to last as part of "instructional time". So we're being downgraded because we're honest.
It is also obvious that in the case of the HSPT, we are reporting the percentage of students who pass it the first time they take it--since virtually every student passes it eventually. I have no way of knowing how many of the districts that report 99% passing rates are doing the same.
The point is that NJMagazine takes data that do not start from a consistent basis to begin with, decides on who-knows-what basis what is relevant and how to weight it, and produces a "ranking" of high schools that has no factual basis whatsoever. It appalls me that so many people think that what they come up with ought to have any influence on how our schools are run. |
Ucnthndlthtruth
| | Posted on Monday, January 15, 2001 - 5:56 pm: | |
Kathy,
Have you contacted NJMagazine and confronted them with your claim of using inconsistent data for comparison ? I'm interested in finding out what they have to say.
By the way, can you offer us an official CCR perspective on the revaluation/tax issue ?
Where does the CCR stand ? |
Nohero
| | Posted on Monday, January 15, 2001 - 7:53 pm: | |
Kathy - Thank you. You thought of checking something that a lot of folks probably haven't thought of. And, you followed through with NJ Monthly. I'm serious, you've done a terrific thing. I think your points are good ones, and now it makes me wonder what we need to do to find out more about this. |
Kathy
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 16, 2001 - 12:30 pm: | |
Nohero, Well, I'm sorry to say that because I never finished my analysis, I didn't follow through with NJMonthly, although Ucnt is right (I can't believe that phrase just came out of my fingers) to suggest that this should be done. I guess it has just always been obvious to me that these rankings have no objective reality, so I just ignored them. But a lot of people do take them seriously. |
Kathy
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 16, 2001 - 11:18 pm: | |
Here's something else I forgot: Bloustein Scholars (formerly Garden State Scholars) are those students in the top 10% of each class who also score above a certain level (1260?) on the SAT's. So it would seem that no more, and probably less, than 10% of a class could be Bloustein Scholars. Yet some schools reported 12%. And no doubt got ranked above us because of it. |
Fringe
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 17, 2001 - 10:03 am: | |
The New Jersey Report Card is compiled by the State Department of Education using data it generates internally and receives from the districts. Financial items, enrollment and class time are among the former. All test scores, including SATs are calculated by the Dept of Ed to avoid fluffing by the districts. The state reports only the HSPT results for first -time takers, and these are the numbers used by "NJ Monthly" for its comparisons. In addition, the Dept of Ed calculates its own SAT results using figures sent directly to it from ETS.
For whatever reason, in its last two Test Score presentations SO-M has chosen to report HSPT results using the combined passing rates for the Fall and Spring administrations of the examination. Likewise, the SAT results reported are not in sync with those reported by the state.
While the 1999 HSPT results have disappeared from the Attic, the Average SAT results found on the Report Card by year by District Factor Group are:
Comparison of Avg. SAT Results
MATH
*Year* *CHS* *I* *GH* *NJ*
1994-95 520 560 527 511
1995-96 508 559 532 508
1996-97 521 563 534 511
1997-98 526 562 536 511
1998-99 514 566 536 513
VERBAL
*Year* *CHS* *I* *GH* *NJ*
1994-95 504 546 519 498
1995-96 497 541 517 496
1996-97 502 541 516 495
1997-97 509 542 518 495
1998-99 500 542 518 496
Average scores. Taken from the 1998-1999 NJ Dept of Education Report Card
1998-99 Columbia High School SAT ranking of average scores with NJ & DFG I high schools
MATH
147 of all NJ public high schools
56 of 56 DFG I high schools
VERBAL
151 of all NJ public high schools
55 of 56 DFG I high schools
I & GH are 2 of 8 categories, called District Factor Groups, that the NJ Dept of Education has divided the state's 600+ districts using socio-economic criteria. The South Orange - Maplewood District (SO-M) is in DFG I, the second highest category including 105 districts - only 56 of which have high schools. Some, including the school board and district administration say it that the CHS enrollment more closely resembles those in the DFG GH (next lower group that includes Montclair and West Orange) should be used.
NJ refers to all New Jersey high school students that took the SATs. If the scores from the 26 Special Needs Districts (DFG A) were excluded from the calculation, the CHS scores would be well below the state average for suburban high schools.
JTL |
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