Latest news with #NewJerseyGovernor'sOffice
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
State school officials preparing new proficiency exam
The state's top education official told lawmakers Monday that implementation of a new computerized exam could start next spring. (Courtesy of the New Jersey Governor's Office) State education officials are working to launch a new computerized student proficiency exam that could be implemented as early as next year, Education Commissioner Kevin Dehmer told the Assembly Budget Committee Monday. Dehmer told the budget panel he expects the department to begin implementing the new assessment in the spring of 2026, adding that its electronic nature will allow for speedier data analysis that could help educators address underperformance on specific topics and subjects. 'One of the big things is we're able to gain more information with less seat time, and because of the accessibility of data, we can translate that back so that teachers can focus on core areas for students so they understand where students might be struggling,' he said. The electronic test, referred to only as 'next-gen' or the 'next generation assessment' Monday, could also be tailored to student performance, allowing more advanced students to tackle tougher questions. Less advanced students could see simpler questions, Dehmer said, to better identify areas in need of improvement. 'Maybe it's with a certain teacher. It comes out they didn't emphasize something enough, they can go back and change how they're doing things to make sure students are picking that subject matter up a little bit better,' the commissioner said. The changes would come as schools are fighting to overcome learning losses incurred during the pandemic. Results from the New Jersey Student Learning Assessment released in December showed some improvement in math and English test scores, but proficiency continued to lag behind prepandemic levels in both subjects. That year, 52% of tested students met or exceeded expectations on the English language arts exam, compared to 58% in 2019, while 40% met or exceeded expectations on the math assessment, compared to 45% five years earlier. Some committee member raised concerns about proposed changes to the state's school funding formula that would allow and incentivize districts raising too little locally to seek higher property tax increases to meet their fair share — the portion of funding a school district is responsible for raising through property taxes. 'Our fear … is that we allow that to happen just for one year, which was last year, and then this kind of opens the gate to something else that we really don't have control of, of how much a district may be able to raise. It puts us in a precarious position,' said Assemblywoman Eliana Pintor Marin (D-Essex), the panel's chair. As lawmakers move to finalize a new state budget by June 30, Gov. Phil Murphy has proposed a $20 million pool of funding to encourage districts taxing beneath their local fair share to seek tax increases above the state's 2% cap on property tax growth. Murphy also wants to limit decreases in state aid to 3% and increases to 6%. Under budget language proposed by the administration, districts that raise taxes above the 2% cap would receive $1 million or 5% of the tax increase that fell above the cap, whichever is less. In recent weeks, some school districts have proposed staggering property tax increases, but Dehmer, speaking generally, said such plans could overstate the level of tax increases a district would eventually seek. 'What they chose to do was say, 'We're going to pass a resolution for the maximum amount, and we're going to work through this from there,'' Dehmer said. 'I think there was some reporting on those resolutions saying, 'We're going to go up this high,' and that may not be the final version that comes to pass.'
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Yahoo
Little tracking, wide variability permeate teams tasked with stopping school shootings
Some of the teams tasked with preventing the next school shooting have developed systemic problems that put them at risk of unfairly labeling and vilifying children. (Courtesy of the New Jersey Governor's Office) Max Schachter wanted to be close to his son Alex on his birthday, July 9, so he watched old videos of him. 'It put a smile on my face to see him so happy,' Schachter said. Alex would have turned 21 that day, six years after he and 16 other children and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, were shot and killed by a former student in 2018. In the years before the shooting, that former student had displayed concerning behavior that elicited dozens of calls to 911 and at least two tips to the FBI. 'Alex should still be here today. It's not fair,' Schachter said. After two weeks of grieving Alex's death, Schachter, propelled by anger and pain, began advocating for school safety. In part, he wanted to ensure his three other children would never be harmed in the same way. He joined the newly formed Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission to improve the safety and security of Florida's students. And he launched a nonprofit bearing Alex's name, which advocates for school safety. Doing that work, he learned about threat assessment teams, groups of law enforcement and school officials who try to identify potentially dangerous or distressed kids, intervene, and prevent the next school shooting. Florida is one of about 18 states that require schools to have threat assessment and intervention teams; a national survey estimates 85% of public schools have a team assigned to the task. The teams, whose mission and operational strategies often are based on research from the FBI and the Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center, or NTAC, have become more common as the number of school shootings has increased. Despite their prevalence for almost 25 years, some of the teams have developed systemic problems that put them at risk of unfairly labeling and vilifying children. States vary widely in their requirements of threat assessment teams and there isn't a nationwide archetype. Few school districts and states collect data about the teams, little is known about their operations, and research on their effectiveness at thwarting mass shootings and other threats is limited. But a 2021 analysis by the NTAC of 67 plots against K-12 schools found that people 'contemplating violence often exhibit observable behaviors, and when community members report these behaviors, the next tragedy can be averted.' 'School shooters have a long thought process. They don't just snap. They have concerning behavior over time. If we can identify them early, we can intervene,' said Karie Gibson, chief of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit. Yet, Dewey Cornell, a forensic clinical psychologist who in 2001 developed one of the first sets of guidelines for school threat assessment teams, said there have been problems. In many cases, he said, threats have been deemed not serious 'but parents and teachers are so alarmed that it is difficult to assuage their fears. The school community gets in an uproar and the school administrators feel pressured to expel the student.' And in other cases, a school doesn't do a threat assessment and assumes a student is dangerous when somebody else reports them as a threat, and they may take a zero tolerance approach and remove them from the school, said Cornell, the Virgil S. Ward professor of education at the University of Virginia. A task force convened by the American Psychological Association found little evidence that zero tolerance policies have improved school climate or school safety and said they may create negative mental health outcomes for students. The task force cited examples of students who were expelled for incidents or school rule violations as minor as having a knife in their lunch box for cutting an apple. Marisa Randazzo, a research psychologist and the director of threat assessment for Georgetown University, said she has also seen 'hyperreactions,' especially among school communities that have experienced a mass killing. 'It's understandable. People who have been close to an event like this are on higher alert than other people,' said Randazzo, who previously worked for the Secret Service and co-founded Sigma Threat Management Associates. Threat assessments are supposed to be a graduated process calibrated to the seriousness of a problem, since the majority of student threats are not credible and can be resolved through supportive interventions, according to research from the Secret Service. Stephanie Crawford-Goetz, a school psychologist and the director of mental health for student support services in the Douglas County School District in Colorado, where a shooting occurred at a charter school in 2019, said her district's threat assessment process emphasizes a proactive, rehabilitative approach to managing potential threats, as the NTAC suggests. Crawford-Goetz said her district interviews students before convening the team to assess whether a threat is a misguided expression of anger or frustration and if the student has a plan and means to carry out violence. Students whose threats are deemed transient receive support, such as help with coping skills, and they may meet with a mental health provider. If the threat is credible, a student may be temporarily removed from the classroom or school. Randazzo said the vast majority of kids who make threats are suicidal or despondent: 'The process is designed primarily to figure out if someone is in crisis and how we can help. It is not designed to be punitive.' Crawford-Goetz tells parents about her district's threat assessment team at the beginning of the school year. Some districts report keeping their teams a secret from parents, which is not how they were designed to operate, said Lina Alathari, chief of the NTAC. Her team encourages schools to educate the whole community about the threat assessment process. Some advocacy groups contend that threat assessment teams have perpetuated inequities. There has also been widespread concern that children with disabilities can easily get swept into a threat assessment. In a 2022 report, the National Disability Rights Network, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., said some threat assessment teams have become 'judge, jury, and executioner,' going beyond assessing risk of serious, imminent harm to determining guilt and punishment. Expanding their scope allows threat assessment teams to get around civil rights protections, the report says. Cornell disputed the disability rights group's conclusion. 'This has not been corroborated by scientific studies and is speculative,' he said. Some states, such as Florida, mandate that threat assessment teams determine whether a student's disability played a role in their behavior and recommend they include special education teachers and other professionals in their evaluation. In Texas, which has mandated threat assessment teams, a third of students subjected to threat assessments in the Dallas Independent School District receive special education services. Yet, the district doesn't have a special education staff representative on its threat assessment team, according to a March 2023 report by Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit public interest justice center. Many school districts are developing their own models in the absence of national standards for threat assessments. Florida revamped its threat assessment system in January 2024 to improve response times, provide consistent data collection, and build in more checks and balances and oversight, said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who is also chair of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission. The new model requires the teams to work quickly and file uniform, electronic summary reports of threat assessment findings. Those results follow students throughout their school years. The adjustments are intended to eliminate the risk of not knowing about a student's past troubling behavior if they change schools, as occurred with the Parkland shooter and a student who shot and killed classmates at a high school near Winder, Georgia, in September, said Gualtieri. 'As parents, you never stop worrying about your kids,' Schachter said. Virginia mandates that all public schools and higher education institutions, including colleges, have threat assessment teams. In Florida, where one of Schachter's daughters attends college, threat assessment teams are mandated in all public schools, including charter schools. 'There's more work to be done,' Schachter said. Cheryl Platzman Weinstock's reporting is supported by a grant from the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation. KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.
