Schools

Good and Bad News for Cinnaminson in Education Report

Cinnaminson is lagging in several areas—while excelling in others—of the state's School Performance Report, released this week.

The state's School Performance Report paints a less-than-favorable picture of Cinnaminson high school and middle school, showing them lagging compared to other districts in several categories, while Rush Intermediate School outperforms many other schools in the state. 

According to the report, Cinnaminson Middle School lags—in some cases significantly—behind its peers and the rest of the state in several categories, particularly Academic Performance and College and Career Readiness. But Superintendent Salvatore Illuzzi questioned the validity of the report, noting that it erroneously omits the eighth grade NJ ASK scores in one section.

"So obviously the scores are incorrect," he said. 

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The high school also lags in a couple categories, though Illuzzi believes this could have something to do with its reclassification into a different group of districts. Up until this year's report, Cinnaminson's "peer" districts included Moorestown, Haddonfield and Lenape, among others.

"That's the group we're comfortable with," said Illuzzi, who noted that neither Haddonfield nor Moorestown high schools were included in the high school's peer group this year.The superintendent said he wasn't sure why the groupings were changed.

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According to the report, peer schools are schools that have similar grade levels and students with similar demographic characteristics, such as the percentage of students qualifying for Free/Reduced Lunch, limited English proficiency programs or special education programs.

One of the categories the high school is shown to be lagging in is College and Career Readiness. However, Illuzzi questioned that result, pointing to a different report released last year which shows Cinnaminson having the highest graduation rate in Burlington County.

"If we're number one in this county, how can we be lagging?" Illuzzi said.

Regardless of what's in the report, Illuzzi said the district strives each year to outperform itself.

"We've always said, no matter what the numbers say, no matter what our peers are doing, we're always going to try to do better from one year to the next," he said.

A few other highlights from the report:

  • The high school outperforms 44 percent of schools across the state in Academic Achievement and 55 percent in College and Career Readiness, but only outperforms 11 percent and 21 percent of schools, respectively in those categories, in its peer group. However, the school outperforms 70 percent of schools statewide and 66 percent in its peer group for Graduation and Post-Secondary Performance.
  • The middle school outperforms 52 percent of schools statewide in academic achievement, but only 6 percent of schools in its peer group. 
  • Rush School outperforms 66 percent of schools statewide in Academic Achievement and 50 percent in its peer group. 
  • Rush School and the high school are meeting 100 percent of their performance goals 

Check out the attached PDFs to see the full performance reports for both the middle school and high school, as well as Rush School and New Albany Elementary School. 


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