State Releases School Report Cards

State Releases School Report Cards

The New Jersey Department of Education last week released the 2007 School Report Card, the database that contains statistical profiles of all public schools in the state.

The annual report, required by state law since 1995, allows the public to compare statistics on each school’s student population, the school environment, student assessment, staff information, and costs of education. The state Department of Education has posted the information on its online Report Card section.

The department identified some statewide trends that can be extrapolated from the information. For instance:

New Jersey’s public schools had 20,714 more students last year than in the previous five years—a 1.5 percent increase. Over the same timeframe, however, the ranks of teachers grew by 5,403 to nearly 111,000—an increase of about 5 percent.
The number of Hispanic students has increased by nearly 34,000 in just five years. The Hispanic student population grew from 227,147 in 2002-03 to 261,058 last year, an increase of approximately 15 percent.
New Jersey’s graduation rate has held steady around 92 percent, although fewer students are graduating through the alternative Special Review Assessment, reflecting a drop from 15 percent of all graduates in 2004-2005 to about 12 percent last year.