Grade 4 Elementary School Proficiency Assessment (ESPA)/New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJ ASK4)

The ESPA/NJ ASK4 is the State assessment required to be given to all grade four students.  This assessment is directly aligned with the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards (NJCCCS), and measures how well students have mastered these standards.  Our district language arts literacy curriculum is aligned with the NJCCCS and so the ESPA/NJ ASK4  is a good measure of the effectiveness of our language arts literacy program through grade four. 

Table 9 shows the percentage of all students over the past three years in the three proficiency ranges (partially proficient, proficient, advanced proficient) in language arts established by the state for reporting purposes.

Table 9:  District Scores on ESPA/NJ ASK4 Language Arts for All Students

    Three Year Trends  2001-2003

Table 10 compares our District advanced proficient and proficient scores in language arts to our DFG (I) and the State advanced proficient and proficient scores in language arts.

Table 10: Comparison of Advanced Proficient and Proficient District Scores to

                 DFG (I) and State Scores on the ESPA/NJ ASK4 Language Arts

                Three-Year Trends 2001-2003

Discussion:  The total percentage of students at the proficient level or higher has remained fairly stable (84%, 86%, 82%) over the last three years. Our district scores are consistently higher than the State in all three years, and our Advanced Proficient scores are close to the DFG (I) average.  These scores indicate that over 80% of our grade four students have achieved mastery of the State Standards.  While this is a good indicator that the language arts program is working well for many students, the 18% of students scoring in the partially proficient range on this assessment are in need of support to be successful.

NJ ASK4:  Disaggregated Scores by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Categories for 2003

Effective in 2003, all state assessments must be reported out by ethnicity, special education, limited English proficiency and poverty breakdowns. The mandate requires that all categories on the NJ ASK4 have 68% (with a misclassification error of 63%) of the students scoring at the proficient level or higher in language arts.  Students may be reported in more than one category.  For example, a student may be counted in the categories of white, special education, and all students.  Categories must have at least 20 students to be counted.

Table 11 shows the disaggregated scores for each group using 2003 New Jersey ASK4 language arts data.

      Table 11:  NJ ASK4 2003 NCLB District Subgroup Proficiency Rates           

                       Language Arts

*General Education is not an NCLB category.  It has been used in this district to report scores of students excluding limited English proficient students and special education students.

**Poverty refers to the students whose families qualify and participate in the free or reduced lunch program.

Discussion:  While it can be seen that generally our students do well (82% of all students demonstrating proficiency), specific categories score significantly lower than others.  The Special Education category did not meet the 63% requirement.  Particularly disturbing is the difference between white students scoring at 91% proficiency and Black students scoring at 72% proficiency. 

    RESULTS GRADES 6-8

TerraNova

The TerraNova assessment is a national standardized normed test.  It samples skills and concepts commonly taught in schools across the country in reading/language arts and mathematics.  As a standardized test, it is always administered with the same questions, the same directions, the same time limits, and the same scoring criteria for all students.  As a norm-referenced test, the TerraNova provides schools with information that compares student achievement with the performance of other students in similar grades across the country. 

Table 12 is a scatter gram showing the scores of students using the grade 3 TerraNova 2000 language arts results and the grade 6 TerraNova 2003 language arts results.  This is a cohort analysis since the 412 students represented in grade 3 are the same students identified in grade 6.

The horizontal axis on the scatter gram represents the grade 3 national percentile reading score on the TerraNova.  The vertical axis represents the grade 6 national percentile reading score on the TerraNova. Each dot represents the national percentile reading score for one student on both tests. 

The scatter gram is divided into 16 sections (labeled A-P).  Each section represents a range of the national percentile reading scores on both tests e.g. students represented in section D scored in the 76 to 100 national percentile on the grade 3 TerraNova and in the 76 to 100 national percentile on the grade 6 TerraNova.  Students in section E scored in the 0-25 national percentile on the grade 3 TerraNova and in the 51-75 national percentile on the grade 6 TerraNova.

Discussion:  An analysis of the scores that individual students received on both tests yields the following information:

ü        Students represented in sections B, C, E, F, and I, scored better on the grade 6 TerraNova than on the grade 3 TerraNova.  This means that 95 students 23% improved their score from the grade 3 TerraNova to the grade 6 TerraNova.

ü        Students represented in sections D, G, J, and M maintained their score on both tests.  This means that 246 students (60%) were in the same national percentile (NP) range on both tests.

ü        Students represented in sections H, K, L, N, P did not score as well on the grade 6 TerraNova as on the grade 3 TerraNova.  This means that 71 students (17%) scored lower on the grade 6 TerraNova than on the grade 3 TerraNova.

ü        Three-hundred-forty-one (83%) students either maintained their score or improved from the grade 3 TerraNova  to the grade 6 TerraNova.

ü        One-hundred-sixty (39%) students who were in the top quartile (76NP-99NP) on the grade 3 TerraNova remained in the top quartile on the grade 6 TerraNova.

ü        Two-hundred-five (50%) students who took the TerraNova in grade 3 scored in the highest quartile (76NP-99NP) on the grade 6 test.

ü        Three-hundred-seventeen (77%) students scored above grade level on the grade 6 TerraNova, as compared to 301 (73%) who scored above grade level on the grade 3 TerraNova.

ü        There were 42  (10%) students who scored in the lowest quartile (0NP-25NP) on the grade 3 TerraNova. Only 18 (4%) of these students remained in the lowest quartile on the grade 6 test.