Educational Quality Control Lacking - New Jersey School District Subject Knowledge Test Results & Family Income

Eugen G Tarnow  September 6 2016 09:58:15 AM

By Eugen Tarnow, Ph.D.
Avalon Business Systems, Inc.
http://AvalonAnalytics.com

We have seen that family income determines 45% of the Avalon school ranking of New Jersey school districts.  

But income does not determine specific subject knowledge.  In other words, you do not get the bang for the buck you might expect in each subject.  

In Figure 1 I show you how much of the subject knowledge is determined by the family income in NJ school districts.  Math knowledge increases from Algebra 1 to Algebra 2 perhaps because the Algebra 1 score is influenced by both middle school and high school students which might make the teachers difficult to supervise.  The trend is the opposite in English, presumably because parents are strongly involved in English 9 and then give up their involvement resulting in an almost random English score in grade 11.

In other words, while district family income determines the AVERAGE score over all subjects, the SPECIFIC scores are left to chance.

If you think school is important, it is time to get involved.  A talk with a low performing department supervisor might be a good beginning.


Figure 1.  Importance of district income in determining subject knowledge.
Comments Disabled