Greater Brunswick Charter Makes List of Improving Middle Schools in NJ

By Anthony Bellano

The Greater Brunswick Charter School ranked fifth among middle school performance gains in the New Jersey Campaign for Achievement Now’s (JerseyCAN) school report cards, the organization announced on Wednesday, June 19.

Every school was graded in the report card, and JerseyCAN compiled top 10 lists for all elementary, middle and high schools in the state.

Schools were judged based on student performance, performance of the school’s subgroup, achievement gap performance gains, and four-year cohort high school graduation rates.

The Greater Brunswick Charter School scored a 24.3 percent at or above proficiency rating in performance gains. The highest ranked school on the list is Elsinboro, at 29.2. JerseyCAN evaluated gains between two grade levels for the 2010-11 and 2011-12 school years for the following levels:

3rd – 4th

4th – 5th

5th – 6th

6th – 7th

7th – 8th

High school students are only tested once over a four-year period, so high schools are not eligible for this category. Publicly available school data is used for this determination.

“As kids start getting their report cards, it is just as important for parents to know how their schools are doing,” said JerseyCAN Executive Director Janellen Duffy. “We believe in using data to guide decision-making in education, whether it’s decisions parents are making about schools or policy decisions that are being made at the state and local level. These report cards are a tool for such data-driven decision-making primarily aimed to help parents.  They are an easy-to-use representation of the data that shows exactly how each New Jersey school is performing on key indicators that track the achievement gap.”

This is the pilot year for JerseyCAN’s school report cards.

JerseyCAN launched in the spring as an education research and policy organization that brings together top educators from across the state. JerseyCAN provides educators with research and policy analysis to enact smart education policy.

For more on JerseyCAN, including report cards, visit jerseycan.org.