Нью-Джерси штаты мектептерінің жылдық есебі

Annual performance report on the schools and school districts of New Jersey

The New Jersey School Report Card is an annual report produced each year by the New Jersey Department of Education for all school districts and schools in the U. S. state of New Jersey. The current School Report Card presents thirty five fields of information for each school in the following categories: school environment, students, student performance indicators, staff, and district finances; however, initially the cards provided far less information. The report cards were first proposed in 1988 by Governor Thomas Kean and mailed out in 1989. Although various types of school report cards had been released in California, Illinois, and Virginia, New Jersey was the first to send the reports home to parents and make them available to all taxpayers. In 1995, the New Jersey legislature passed a law expanding the scope of the report cards to include more financial matters and the withholding of state aid to inefficient schools. This was part of Governor Christine Todd Whitman’s push to decrease administrative costs in education. The report cards are still issued, and their annual release attracts attention in large papers such as the New York Times.

Governor Thomas Kean first broached the idea of school report cards in his 1988 State of the State address. He argued that "the more parents know, the more involved they can be. This is a way to arm them with that knowledge." The proposal initially faced strong opposition, and in the spring of 1988 some superintendents refused to release their test score data to the state because they feared it would be used in the report cards. The schools eventually consented to release the data and no report cards were issued that year. In February 1989 Kean announced that report cards would be shipped for the first time that fall. In the mid 1990s, Governor Christine Todd Whitman began making a drive for increased efficiency in education. At that point, New Jersey had administrative costs per pupil of $1,700, the highest cost of any state in the nation. In the summer of 1995, the New Jersey Legislature passed a bill enabling state aid to be withheld from schools that spent more than 30% on administrative costs and requiring the release of more financial data. However, the main focus has remained unchanged and their contents continue to be reported on by large local papers.

The New Jersey School Report Card program has been criticized by education professionals and activists for being unhelpful, making unfair comparisons and oversimplifying difficult issues. James A. Moran, the executive director of the New Jersey Association of School Administrators said "We don't believe it will do good for the students of New Jersey or the school districts." Susan Fuhrman of the Center for Policy Research in Education "My major concern is that parents, citizens, and real estate agents will draw very simplistic conclusions."