Administrators in the Lenape Regional High School District have received the New Jersey School Performance Reports for the district’s four high schools — Lenape, Shawnee, Cherokee and Seneca.
“Overall the results in the state’s reports reflect what we believe are our district’s and each school’s strengths and areas in need of improvement,” Superintendent of Schools Carol Birnbohm, Ed.D said.
The NJ School Performance Reports evaluate school performance in three key areas: academic performance, graduation and post-secondary performance and college and career readiness.
According to Birnbohm, three of the four LRHSD schools met or exceeded the target benchmarks for academic achievement, with 90 to 100 percent of targets met, which resulted in a comparison of high or very high with schools across the state.
The one exception is Lenape High School, which did not meet its benchmark in one area — mathematics on one assessment, the HSPA, for students with disabilities — resulting in a ranking of average when compared with schools across the state and within its peer group.
The Lenape Regional District performed as expected meeting 100 percent of targets in terms of graduation and post-secondary performance. In the 2011/2012 school year, the Lenape Regional District had an average graduation rate of 95.3 percent, the highest in Burlington County and among the highest statewide.
This was reflected in the NJ School Performance Reports, where the graduation rates for all of the LRHSD high schools exceeded 94 percent, well above the statewide target of 75 percent.
Post-secondary attendance data was also analyzed in conjunction with graduation rates.
On average, nearly 80 percent of the district’s graduates who go on to college are still enrolled in college 16 months after high school graduation.
Birnbohm points to the district’s high average SAT scores as one indicator of LRHSD’s graduates’ success in college.
“The average student SAT scores at all of our high schools exceeded 1550 in a five year analysis from 2008 through 2012,” Birnbohm said.
According to the College Board, a student with an SAT score of 1550 or higher is more likely to get a B-minus freshmen year of college, helping to put them on a path to graduate from college. The LRHSD schools did not meet two key benchmarks that, according to the Performance Reports, are indicators of college and career readiness — the percentage of students participating in PSAT and the percentage of students taking at least one AP test in English, Math, Social Studies or Science.
“We were aware of our students’ low participation in the PSATs based on our own statistics
