ORANGE, NJ — Orange residents answering Public Question No. 1 at the polls last week left no doubt in anyone’s mind as to their choice; almost 77 percent voted to change from an appointed to an elected Board of Education.
According to the Essex County Clerk’s Office, 3,899 Orange voters voted to change from an appointed board to an elected board, as opposed to 1,178 voters who wanted to maintain the status quo.
Now Board of Education decisions are firmly in the hands of Orange voters and many people, including City Council President Donna K. Williams, are happy about that.
“Congrats to the Orange voters who have decided to elect their school board going forward. First school board election November 2017,” Williams posted on Facebook on Wednesday, Nov. 9, shortly after election results were listed.
Resident Tyrone Tarver was also pleased, as he had been pushing hard for the switch, citing the poor performance by Orange schools on standardized tests such as the PARCC exam as a reason for the change.
“Seventy-seven percent of people wished for it,” wrote Tarver on Wednesday, Nov. 9. “And we go it. Our first school board election ever. Parents now have a say. I see nothing but positive things in that.”
The current appointed board recently decided to give Ron Lee a new three-year contract to continue to serve as superintendent, despite ongoing concerns by Tarver and others about low test scores during his seven years running the district, and more recent safety concerns since the double homicide that occurred at 234 Cleveland St., on the corner of Hawthorne Street on Thursday, Nov. 3.
However, Jessica Webb, who is a tutor for Mathology test preparation company in West Orange, said a poor performance on the PARCC exam should not alarm parents or teachers.
“I tutor math and science and language arts to kids ranging from elementary school to college in East Orange, Newark, West Orange, wherever,” said Webb on Friday, Oct. 28, at an event at The Pour Artist studio in Bloomfield. “Actually, I teach a program over at NJIT on Saturdays for PARCC assistance in math.”
“I think what people miss out on in PARCC is testing students on a range of skills and focusing on competency. So a student in eighth grade can be tested on sixth-grade, fifth-grade skills, so if you just happened to have a poor teacher or a poor experience in school in the fifth and sixth grade and then you take it in eighth grade, you may have missed a lot of things that are going to be on the assessment. So it’s not like a superintendent thing or a teacher thing. It could be just your experience in your education process that’s making it not as easy to pass the test.
“You have to take the PARCC in high school; it’s mandated and you have to get a certain score, in order to graduate, because it’s like one of the graduation requirements. Parents can opt out in middle school. And then the first year they rolled it out, you could opt out of it entirely, but now they’re saying that you have to take it, because it’s one of the graduation requirements. I taught in Virginia for two years and the kids have been taking that test for years and they’re being successful and doing very well in other states.”
Orange voters choose to elect school board added by Chris Sykes on
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Thank you Mr. Sykes for mentioning me in the article.
I appreciate Ms. Jessica Webb’s input on our city’s dilemna, but her comments on this situation do not address the full picture. And I’m not sure she fully knows of our district’s education crisis.
2500 out of 3100 students failed to pass the PARCC Math exam in 2016.
2350 out of 3050 students failed to pass the PARCC English Language Arts exam in 2016.
It is not only our district’s poor performance on the PARCC exam in 2015 and 2016. It is a 7-year trend of our student’s poor performance on the SAT and NJASK exams as well.
On the NJASK (the previous state standardized test for Math and English Language Arts), from 2010 thru 2014, we had perennially ranked in the bottom performing districts in the state.
These tests are put in place to be indicators of the levels of education students are achieving in their schools. What bothers me is that there are some, including the Superintendent, School Board Members and some City Council members, who after knowing or being informed of our students’ poor performances in ALL of the tests for years, are now trying to downplay the effectiveness of the NJASK, SAT and PARCC exams, simultaneously!!
A good majority of our students are receiving passing grades in their schools, but 75%-80% of the students, in our WHOLE district, are doing poorly on ALL of these tests…for 7 years??
The Superintendent recently tried to defend the low PARCC scores by stating that before the PARCC test, students were passing the NJASK test. But he doesn’t mention that the city was still ranked near the bottom 10% of school districts in the state regarding our NJASK scores for his first 5 of 7 years. And, the state deemed the test much too simple and not an accurate measure of our NJ students’ academic levels.
After reviewing other NJ districts’ performances on our state exams, what I’m finding is that the districts who scored high on the NJASK also perform high on the PARCC exam. And the same goes for low performing districts.
In other words, Orange was ranked very, very low in the state before the PARCC exam, and we’re STILL ranked low after the implementation of the PARCC exam. Nothing has changed. The PARCC exam has NOT caused our children to score lower than before.
Regarding the SAT exam, district-wide for at least 7 years our students have never averaged above “1150” on the SAT exam (which had a max score of “2400”). All students receive a minimum score of “600” just for showing up to take the test.
New Jersey’s SAT state average for this period was around “1500”. In 2015, Orange High School ranked 355 out of 391 high schools in the state.
The Orange School Board president, Cristina Mateo, recently defended our students’ tremendously low SAT scores by stating that there are many colleges that are going “Testing Optional” and aren’t weighing SAT scores as much in their admissions process. She didn’t offer solutions or new plans to address the situation. She basically just stated not to worry about the low scores because there are “some” colleges that might not use those scores to admit students.
It’s hard to have good, revealing conversations at our School Board and Council meetings. After public comments are closed, the public does not have the opportunity to publicly rebut officials’ comments.
But in the past 3 weeks alone, I’ve talked to and corresponded with Deans and Assistant Deans of Admissions in 5 NJ colleges, as well as the National Association of College Admissions and Counseling in Washington, DC. All of them have said that even though SAT scores aren’t the only factor they use in screening students who want to attend their universities, SAT scores are indeed good indicators of what level of education students have learned in high school.
Furthermore, I am ultimately worried about Orange students who have to take remedial courses entering college. Because along with students racking up huge debt just to pay for college, a lot of students have to accumulate an additional 1-2 years of college debt after they’ve learned that they graduated high school with a 10th or 11th grade education. Now they have to pay a huge amount of money to take high school courses before they can even begin taking regular college courses.
I will not stop revealing this info to all of Orange residents. After five months of speaking at School Board and City Council meetings, I am extremely happy to now be working with other parents regularly to see what can be done to remedy this citywide crisis. And I am extremely glad that parents are able to hold our School Board more accountable and have Orange’s first School Board Election EVER. We can now have a much bigger say in who guides our city’s educational system.
we will see if the orange school system get to the top in essex county with a elected panel i dont think it will change our education in orange we need parent invovlment this is a key elment you have to think before we change the school board we at this time we have dedciated leadership on the school board it takes the whole community to change not personal agendas it should be all about the kids in orange the elected officials have to do there part the community has to do there part and the board of education members the teachers the parents all have to work togerther we all have to want to make the orange school system strong and there has to be leadership to go and move our community as moving the orange community forward to all working together to make a better education distict its about working hard