Op-Ed: The system that evaluates NJ public school operations needs an overhaul

By Joseph Isola

The New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum (NJQSAC), which dates back almost two decades, aims to monitor and systematically evaluate all areas of public school operations, specifically in the areas of instruction and program, governance, fiscal management, operations and personnel. Yet despite New Jersey’s top national education ranking, most of its districts fail to meet with success under NJQSAC. This brings to light the urgent need to overhaul this flawed scoring system to maintain accountability, while ensuring equity.

The State Board of Education is considering a proposal for changes to the system, with further deliberation planned for this coming week. As the superintendent of a school district in New Jersey, I believe the following should be considered.

An unfair system

NJQSAC’s current framework is unfair in its depiction of the performance of many districts. Schools labeled “in need of improvement” are often relegated to that category due to low scores on the instruction and program indicators. Those are driven by New Jersey Student Learning Assessment standardized test scores, as well as attendance and graduation rates.

How can New Jersey’s educational system be considered among the finest in the country when the majority of districts are deemed “in need of improvement” as the outcome of the monitoring process? This disparity calls for immediate attention and reform.

One of the key problems with NJQSAC scoring is inequitable weighting of categories that disproportionately affects low-income, high-diversity districts with many multilingual learners. Why? Because a single student may be included in several subgroups (multi-language learner, special education, high poverty, etc.), allowing that student’s test performance to be counted multiple times. This unfairly skews results and perpetuates a false narrative of inadequacy.

Standardized tests have also come into question, as outcomes often align with students’ ZIP codes or demographics rather than actual achievement.

There are many high-diversity, low-income districts that are helping all students learn at high levels. This formula doesn’t acknowledge their efforts, it stifles them. At the same time, neighboring districts with little diversity reap the benefits of a system tipped in their favor.

Science assessment issues

The inclusion of a problematic new science assessment exacerbates these issues, with 77% of students failing to meet proficient levels statewide during last year’s administration. This test’s undue weight disproportionately harms K-8 districts.

For English Language Arts and math tests, clear feedback on student performance linked to standards is made available to districts, giving schools the ability to identify their deficits and focus their efforts on the standards that eluded their students. But this type of feedback isn’t offered for science, making it much more difficult for schools to pinpoint their weaknesses and address them. This leaves school leaders across the state with more speculation than data as a tool for improvement.

The science assessment is also only given to 5th and 8th grade students, representing about 33% of the testing population in a K-8 district. Yet the weight of the scores for QSAC represents a higher percentage than that, a percentage equivalent to that of ELA and math which is taken by all students in grades 3-8 each year. The proposal before the State Board would lessen the science test’s weighting, but this flawed test still incurs a disproportionately negative impact, more so than any other indicator in the entire NJQSAC process.

Similarly, using graduation rates as a blanket indicator lacks nuance and can be misleading for high school-only districts. For example, a district is penalized for a student who left high school after three years to attend a four-year fully accredited college before formally completing high school. The monitoring process had deemed this student as a “dropout.” In this and other examples, the NJQSAC process lacks the needed flexibility to properly monitor accountability.

If New Jersey is truly the highest-performing state, more districts’ NJQSAC scores should reflect that. High-poverty, diverse districts especially do not see their improvements accurately represented, even when their students are outperforming state averages in key areas.

Long-term solutions

These issues can be best addressed by the following actions that would allow for immediate solutions within the current monitoring cycles.

• Waiver for subgroup averaging: Allow equitable scoring without current subgroup biases.
• Waiver for science assessment scores: Allow districts to use internal assessments or averages of other subjects.
• Balanced subject weights: Adjust weights for a fairer reflection of student achievement.

While NJQSAC is up for regulatory review, some long-term solutions might include:

• Restructure instruction and program scores: Align those scores with other district performance review areas, making it possible for districts to achieve full points. Even the highest-achieving districts aren’t able to earn the comparable scores they are given in Governance, Fiscal Accountability, Operations, and Personnel.
• Exclude flawed science scores until a reliable test is available.
• Fair subgroup weighting to eliminate duplication: Ensure that diverse districts are fairly represented.
• Rebalance points distribution: Increase points for comprehensive curricular indicators, reducing overreliance on NJSLA scores. Under Instruction and Program, only 40 points out of 100 are allocated to curricular instruction and programs, 60 points are performance-based. This imbalance makes the QSAC process about one thing: performance on state assessments, some of which are flawed and need to be reevaluated.

At the July 10 State Board of Education meeting, the New Jersey Department of Education introduced amendments to be made with its readoption of N.J.A.C. 6A:30, Evaluation of the Performance of School Districts. These recommendations are certainly a step in the right direction, as they have put an increased emphasis on student growth and acknowledge the over-emphasis of the science assessment.

However, when we are seeing more than 7 out of 10 students statewide not reach proficient levels in the statewide science assessment, a larger question looms: should the test be included in this monitoring process at all, while it is clearly not properly measured in student learning?

What also remains a concern is the lack of changes in scoring weights, although the proposed changes are helpful. But there is still an underlying inequity here that isn’t being addressed. Students are still included in multiple subgroup categories; therefore, districts that serve high percentages of economically disadvantaged students, multilingual learners, and special education students will continue to be disproportionately impacted when determining student achievement.

In summary, NJQSAC must be reformed to ensure equity and transparency, leading to a fairer and more accurate assessment of every district’s performance. Stakeholders must advocate for these changes to benefit our students, educators, and communities. The time for action is now.