NJSpotlight News announced on December 12, 2023, the results of the 2023 school year standardized testing. This year's results were also compared to last year (2022) and 2019, the last year before COVID. Gloucester City's results were embarrassing.
High School - no results reported for 11th grade ELA (English Language Arts) or Math. Of the 160 students who took the Science test, only 10.7% scored passing or proficient in 2023. In 2022, 16.0% scored passing or proficient; in 2019, it was 4.5%. The good news is that about 2.5 times as many of our students scored well, but if the 11th grade scored 4.5%, there is no way to go but up.
Middle School - the 142 8th-grade students almost scored well in ELA. There were 60.6% who scored passing or proficient in 2023. This is an improvement over last year (2022) when the number was 50.5%, a decrease from 2019 with a score of 59.2%.
The scores for the 144 8th-grade students who took the Math portion of the test were shocking. This year, 2023, only 4.4% scored passing or proficient. That means six students out of 144 passed the test! Last year, 2022, 13.2% passed, and in 2019, the number was 20%. So, the best our 8th-grade students scored over four years was about 19 students who passed. This is sad.
The Science scores go down from the Math and ELA. As hard as it is to believe, the Science scores were worse! In 2023, 149 8th grade students took the test, and only 4.0% scored pass or proficient. Again, that is about six students. This was no better than 2022 when 4.2% passed and in 2019 when 4.3% passed.
COLD SPRINGS- No scores were recorded at all.
For any newcomers, Gloucester City is an "Abbott" school district. Long story short, 31 districts receive about 60% of the state's education budget. The rest of the state's almost 600 districts share the other 40%. In the 1980s when the Abbott question was in the courts, Haddonfield's voters contended that you can't solve a problem by throwing money at it. The test scores prove the Haddonfield voters were right.