Tuesday, November 07, 2006

South Jersey Group I Semi-Finals

Good luck to the Thundering Herd Boys Soccer team as they travel to Burlington City today to play in the semi-final round of the NJSIAA South Jersey Group I competition. The boys had an exciting victory over second seed Pitman last Friday in the opening round. Today's game starts at 2 p.m.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mr. Jones,
This has nothing to do with the present posting, but as a non-Walnut Street School parent, I am getting very frustrated at reading on this blog and the NJ.com Woodbury Forum that Walnut is the better school of the three in this district because of the NJ ASK results. I have copied and pasted a well-written response to this from a response to your elementary reconfiguration plan blog. I hope more people will read this and understand why these results don't give the true picture. All three of our elementary schools are excellent. Do you think the high school was named best in Gloucester County, etc. all on its own? No, most of the students at WHS attended one of the three elementary schools. Whether it's ASK test results or recognition from a magazine, let's give credit where credit is due.
Maybe, Mr. Jones, you could write a blogspot explaining exactly how the testing results are computed, but for now, here is what another person who responded wrote
"However, it should be known that Walnut is not the only school to receive a passing grade based on NCLB. West End received passing scores this past year as well. Walnut has wonderful teachers who do an excellent job teaching all populations, but these test results can be seriously misleading. Walnut's numbers are too small to count in the mandated subgroups of NCLB based on race, socio-economic, spec. ed groupings. These subgroups are what count in a school making AYP and what the GCT publishes. In fact, if these sub-groups were taken away, both other elementary schools would rank along with Walnut in test score averages. When Walnut's results are published, they aren't scrutinized the way the other two larger elementary schools are because their numbers per class size and sub-group remain under 20 students. For example, the way the NCLB law states, a child who is non-white, poor, and in special ed will count three times when determining sub-groupings, which is why so many in the education field have issues with this law."

Joseph Jones said...

Thanks for your comments. You are correct to point out the various, complicating factors associated with trying to compare results school to school. Yes, all schools meet the AYP criteria for the results on the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (ASK) testing for Spring 2006 with the exception of one subgroup’s score in one subject area at one school (Evergreen’s Economical Disadvantaged students in language arts literacy).

All other total population scores and subgroup scores for both mathematics and language arts literacy meet the expected cut-off in all of the elementary schools. All of our elementary schools are performing very well.

Anonymous said...

I think that this post was for the boys soccer team, not walnut school, and the previous comment should have been posted somewhere else, or perhaps emailed directly to Mr Jones.
It was disrespectful to the soccer team to ignore their post.
For those that care...they lost yesterday 3-1, but played an outstanding season in a very tough conference. Congratulations to the boys for a great season! you played your hearts out!

Anonymous said...

As a fan of Woodbury High Soccer, I must comment on yesterdays game. Mr. Jones, you should be very proud of the soccer team and the entire student body who showed up to support their school and their team. It was a hard fought, exciting game. The boys soccer team and the school should be extremely proud.

Joseph Jones said...

I agree! Our boys played a tough game; we could have just as easily won. It was very exciting. Woodbury was well represented by all.

Anonymous said...

The soccer team played a great season. I'm sorry they couldn't continue in the playoffs, but should be extremely proud of what they have accomplished.