Moorestown Performing Well Per State Evaluation

Faculty and staff with the are in the business of giving out grades, but every four years the state grades them.

And just as the district prides itself on the academic accomplishments of its student body, the educators and administrators responsible for guiding those students appear to be getting high marks as well.

Superintendent John Bach told school board members Tuesday the district scored well on the state Department of Education’s Quality Single Accountability Continuum (QSAC)—a monitoring and evaluation system for public school districts.

The QSAC measures district performance in five categories: curriculum and instruction, fiscal management, governance, personnel and operations. Based on the district’s evaluation of itself—based on its compliance with state standards—it scored 100 percent in governance, personnel and operations, and only slightly less than 100 percent in fiscal management.

Bach said the district’s score in curriculum and instruction is incomplete because it needs results from state testing to finish the self-evaluation—and the state hasn’t given the district those scores yet.

“We were told we would have the (numbers) by now,” he said. “As is unfortunately the custom with the state, we don’t have the numbers from them yet.”

According to Bach, the district has earned 66 points thus far out of a possible 100 in curriculum and instruction. The remaining 34 will come from the state testing results. The district won’t get all of those points, he said—no one does—but administrators are anticipating about 30, for a total score of 96.

The last time the state performed QSACs in 2008, Moorestown got a 95, Bach said, receiving a “high-performing district” designation. He’s expecting a similar, if not slightly higher score this year.

The state shifted the weighting of the different QSAC categories this year to place more of an emphasis on curriculum and instruction, which Bach said he wholeheartedly supports.

The Department of Education also weighted state testing more heavily in this year’s QSAC, a move the superintendent was somewhat less enthusiastic about.

“Whether or not testing should be weighted that heavily, that’s another question altogether,” he said.

The district must submit its QSAC self-evaluation to the state by Monday, after which the state will visit the district to verify the scoring.