Vernon schools performing at state average

The Vernon Township School District is close to or at the state average in both mathematics and English Language Arts and Glen Meadow Middle School is looking to emerge from target school status.

Russ Rogers, director of Math and Science, and Vinnie Gagliostro unveiled the numbers to the district’s Board of Education on Sept. 19.

The biggest emphasis was on the performance of students at Glen Meadow Middle School, which is in its second year as a state target school.

The school will be eligible to exit target identification in January of 2021.

"State has told us whether regardless of whether we attain our goals, we are at target status for three years,” Rogers said. “After the three years, that's when they re-evaluate our status. So far, we have met our goals, but it's at the end of the three years when they'll let us know."

The particular area where the school has struggled is in the Math Special Education subset, where the school is showing steady progress in Grades and in 2018-19 was within 2 percentage points of achieving its goal.

"Reason we're in the target status is because of that subgroup and that data,” Rogers said. “That's what we're focused on. We've been able to provide interventions that I think are going to help our test scores for other student as well that were on the bubble."

The school has exceeded the state goals in English/Language Arts and Rogers said the school is anticipating graduating from the target school status.

“As long as we are showing growth, that will be enough," Rogers said.