ACHIEVEMENT DATA PRESENTED TO SUPREME COURT
BY
DR. BARI ERLICHSON AND DR. ROBERT SLAVIN

The Commissioner has not conducted a comprehensive evaluation of whole school reform (WSR), as ordered by the Supreme Court in the 1998 Abbott V decision. The Commissioner now argues, however, that the whole school reform "has not achieved the progress expected in improving students’ achievement." The only achievement data offered by the Commissioner to support this conclusion are the results on the 2002 fourth grade Elementary School Proficiency Assessment (ESPA).

Dr. Bari Anhalt Erlichson

Since 1998, Dr. Erlichson, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Bloustein School at Rutgers, has conducted her own studies on implementation of whole school reform in Abbott schools. She examined student achievement data in the Abbott schools from 1999 (when schools began selecting WSR programs) using the ESPA data publicly released by the NJDOE, and the information about cohort and whole school reform model selection from her studies. Her key findings are:

• In 1999, the NJDOE ESPA report indicates that Abbott students on average scored 185 points on the language arts section. Non-Abbott students averaged 209 points. The statewide average in 1999 was 204 points. On average then, non-Abbott students scored 24 points higher on this section than Abbott students. According to the ESPA report for 2002, the gap between Abbott students and non-Abbott students had narrowed to 15 points. In 2002, Abbott students scored on average 209 points on the language arts section compared to the average of 224 points for non-Abbott students. The statewide average in 2002 was 221.

• The average point gain made by Abbott students from 1999 to 2002 was 23.9 points compared to a 14.9 point gain from non-Abbott students while the statewide average point gain was 16.8 points.

• This trend of varying rates of improvement also is evident in the percent of students labeled partially proficient (the lowest category) on the language arts section of the ESPA. In 1999, 66.2% of Abbott students were labeled partially proficient compared to 29.6% of non-Abbott students and the statewide average of 37.2%. The difference between Abbott students and non-Abbott students in 1999 was 36.6% points. In 2002, the difference between these two groups had narrowed nearly sixteen points to 20.7% points. The percent of Abbott students labeled partially proficient declined by 36 percentage points to a total of 30.2%. By contrast, non-Abbott students labeled partially proficient in 2002 totaled 9.5%, for a reduction of 20% points from 1999 to 2002.

Based on this analysis, Dr. Erlichson concludes that the early student achievement results indicate that Abbott schools are making "significant gains" in achievement compared to the statewide average gains and non-Abbott student gains.

Dr. Robert E. Slavin

Dr. Robert E, Slavin, Co-Director of the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk (CRESPAR) at Johns Hopkins University, and developer of the Success for All (SFA) program, was the former Commissioner’s leading expert witness in the 1998 Abbott V hearings. Based on his testimony, and other research, the Court found the evidence "impressive" of the success of SFA in improving student achievement in high poverty schools, especially in early literacy. Since 1998, Dr. Slavin has been working directly in 67 Abbott elementary schools that chose SFA as its WSR program.

Dr. Slavin analyzed achievement data from the 67 Abbott schools that have adopted SFA. He concludes that when assessment data on the 4^th grade ESPA is examined on a longitudinal basis, SFA schools have made "extraordinary gains" in literacy, and "substantial" gains in math since 1999. His findings are:

• Among the 43 schools that began Success for All in 1999 or earlier, ESPA scores rose by 35.7 percentage points in students scoring at or above the "proficient" level, while New Jersey students as a whole gained 23.6 percentage points. The 13 Success for All schools that began in 2000 have gained 37.5 percentage points since then, while the state gained 25.2 points. These differences are highly statistically significant (p<.001).

• Success for All schools using MathWings, the elementary math program presented in Abbott V, also made substantial gains. The 10 schools that began MathWings in 1999 have gained 19.7 percentage points on ESPA-Mathematics, while the state as a whole gained 8.5 percentage points. Among the 19 schools that began MathWings by 2000, gains averaged 7.5 percentage points, while the state gained 2.8 points.