newjerseynewsroom.com

BY BOB HOLT

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

A report from the Data Quality Campaign says New Jersey has gotten better, but is still far behind in its use of student data to improve teaching.

New Jersey has only applied 4 of the 10 actions to use the student data well. 36 states are using all 10 elements in 2011, an increase from none back in 2005.

The Data for Action campaign’s essential elements include unique student identification, student enrollment, demographic and participation information, matching of students’ test records each year to chart their academic growth, information on untested students, teacher identifiers, student transcripts, college readiness test scores, graduation and dropout records, information to match student records between P–12 and post-secondary systems, and state audits to check the data’s quality.

According to NorthJersey.com, Data Quality said New Jersey can track students’ K-12 data, doesn’t use the data to induce change in helping the children who have fallen behind.

A New Jersey Education Department spokesman said the state recently began measuring gains by comparing each child with peers across the state who had similar test scores previously.

Students who score higher than those peers on the more recent testing get a high "student growth percentile." Students who score worse get a lower percentile. And teachers may decide to give those percentiles to parents. By fall of 2012, New Jersey will be able to determine how much each teacher helped a student’s growth.

Governor Christie has not decided whether the teachers’ ratings will be made public.

The Republic reports that Georgia is being hailed as one of the national leaders in using this data. The system of tracking the students and teachers played a big part in Georgia’s winning $400 million from the Race to the Top grant competition last year.