Sussex-Wantage meeting expectations in certain areas

Sussex-Wantage Regional School District students met performed best at the middle school level in English and Language Arts and at the in third grade at mathematics, according to the Spring New Jersey Student Learning Assessments, which were held in the spring.

Nearly half (48.4 percent) of Sussex-Wantage third graders met or exceeded expectations in math, which is 3 percentage points above the state average.

Grades 6-8 also exceeded state averages in ELA, with 49 percent of sixth graders meeting or exceeding expectations. About 58 percent of seventh graders met or exceeded expectations, compared to 52.7 statewide and 51.9 percent met or exceeded expectations, compared to a statewide average of 51.9 percent.

“You do have a higher population of meeting expectations, but some of this discrepancy could be – not to blame everything on COVID – but COVID did have a significant impact on our students,” Director of Curriculum Kaleigh Themelakis said.

She also said that in the earlier grades, hands-on learning experience is most valuable and that may not have transferred over as well during the virtual and hybrid school setting during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

District students struggled in mathematics in sixth grade with only 17.3 meeting expectations. None exceeded expectations in either sixth- or seventh-grade math.

Stephanie Hennion, the district’s director of special services, attributed those numbers to students having to learn long division remotely.

“That’s a definite skill that you would have to learn during those grade levels,” she said. “You need to do multiplication with long division, divide, multiply, subtract, bring down numbers. Trying to do that without being with the child is very difficult.”

Only 13.9 percent of the district’s fifth graders were proficient in since, and that number dropped to 8.3 in eighth grade. However, 62 percent of eighth graders were near proficiency.