SBHS Rates High on New School Performance Reports

In the first year of a new evaluation system put in place by the New Jersey Department of Education, South Brunswick High School rated as a high performance school both compared to schools across the state and to schools with similar demographics.

“These new school performance reports were developed with the input of stakeholders across the state and provide a significant amount of new data to present a more complete picture of school performance,” said Commissioner Chris Cerf. “We hope this data will help schools and stakeholders engage in local goal setting and improvement to help all students graduate from high school ready for college and career.”

The NJ School Performance reports for 2011-12 include new data on college and career readiness, while providing comparison to “peer schools” in order to provide a more complete overview of performance for educators and the public, according to the DOE. 

Peer schools have similar grade levels and demographic characteristics, including the percentage of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch, limited English proficiency programs and special education programs. Included in South Brunswick's peer schools are West Windsor-Plainsboro, Princeton and Hillsborough.

South Brunswick High School's academic performance rated high when compared to schools across the state and high when compared to its peers. SBHS college and career readiness rated high when compared to schools across the state and rated on par with its peers.

The SBHS graduation and post-secondary performance rated high when compared to schools across the state, while its graduation and post-secondary readiness is high when compared to peer schools.

Under Academic Achievement on the HSPA, which measures the total school-wide proficiency rate in both Language Arts Literacy and Math across multiple administrations of the assessment, SBHS scored a 98 percent rating on HSPA Language Arts Proficiency and 92 percent on Math Proficiency.

For NCLB requirements on the HSPA, SBHS exceeded the target proficiency rating for both Math and Language Arts. SBHS also exceeded NCLB requirements for graduation rates with a 95 percent school performance rating. A total of 81 percent of SBHS students were enrolled in an institution of higher education nationwide 16 months after graduating high school, according to the National Student Clearinghouse.

On Advanced Placement exams, 92 percent of SBHS students scored a three out of five or higher on Math, English, Social Studies and Science, a score that earns college credit. SBHS rated higher than 89 percent of schools statewide in that category.

On SAT exams, 59 percent of SBHS students who took the exam scored a 1,550 or higher, which outperformed 80 percent of schools statewide. The SBHS composite SAT score was 1,636, which scored above the peer average of 1,615.

“While the evaluation of student outcome data is crucial for school improvement, we know that these data alone cannot capture the dozens of other essential elements of schools such as a positive school climate, participation in extracurricular programs and the development of non-cognitive skills,” said Chief Performance Office Bari Erlichson. “However, by focusing on college and career readiness and including meaningful comparisons for schools, we hope that these new reports will inform conversations at the local level about where schools are doing well and where they can continue to improve.”