What We Can Do To Reverse The Berkeley Heights Declines In Math, Science, And ELA Part 2: Evidence-Based Decision Making

The Second in a Series of Articles on How Berkeley Heights Can Repair the Damage under Dr. Varley’s Leadership

Since BHCW’s analysis of the Berkeley Heights School District’s declines in Math, Science, and English came out, I have had many conversations with different parents, teachers, and other school staff in the community on how to reverse them.  

In the second round of articles that shifted focus from the actual declines to the possible reasons for the declines, I provided a few suggestions on several key areas empirically connected to student performance.  

This series aims to expand on these suggestions, add more flesh to how they would look, and incorporate some of the feedback received from community members.

Evidence-Based Decision Making: The current debate on proficiency declines is exhibit A of the District’s issues in this area. In 2022, BHCW and several BOE candidates expressed concerns about Berkeley Height’s proficiency decline. At that time, BHCW requested a thorough analysis from the Superintendent which we are yet to receive. In 2023, the BOE majority refused to have the Superintendent provide a presentation on the issue and then denied the existence of a report which the public later discovered did exist. This report offered no comparative analysis except for areas connected to AP students, did not include a significant subject area (Science), and did not meaningfully speak to the declines.  

Analysis of this Issue Across Several Areas:

Culture, Data And Measurement: Possible Factors Connected To The BHPSNJ Declines

Impact Of Reconfiguration & School Transitions On Students And The BHPSNJ Decline

ONE MORE REALLY LONG ARTICLE ABOUT PROFICIENCIES AND METRICS

Goals, Performance, And Metrics

Comments On Recent Data Provided By The BH School District On Reconfiguration

The Berkeley Height Public School Survey Problem

Questions on FDK Survey

BOE Discussion on DEI Goals

Actions We Can Take With Our Decision Making Process To Reverse The Declines

(1) Evaluate All Initiatives and Policies within our Schools through an Empirical Lens

Dr. Varley has quite a track record for using the term “best practice” for someone who rarely connects evidence or research to many of the changes she has implemented within our District. Reconfiguration, DEI, the School Substance Use Policy, Police In Schools, the Recent Reorganization of our Schools, Curriculum Changes, Building Thinking Classroom- all of these rather impactful decisions were made without a single reference to peer-reviewed research. When presented with research by residents, the District often ignores it entirely or responds with statements such as “other schools are doing it” or with feedback from parents through surveys engineered to produce an outcome. Sometimes a committee representing a “cross-section of parents” is formed. Yet, no one knows who the parents are, how they were selected, or ever had the opportunity to ask to participate.

This whole approach would be unbelievable unless you lived in Berkeley Heights and understood that schmoozing, connections, and fads tend to drive decision-making. 

The District needs to form a committee(s) that evaluates all programming through the lens of evidence. What does this program, initiative, or policy seek to do? What evidence supports its efficacy? If none, are there evidence-based alternatives, and can we use those? If not, can we create instruments in-house to measure it properly?

The Board should also require that any new initiative the school seeks to implement be supported by at least two peer-reviewed studies, a pilot and a certain number of signatures from parents with children within the school supporting it. Approval can require town halls and a District-wide vote depending on the scale. Cranford demonstrated an excellent pathway to this kind of method in how it handled its’ reconfiguration.

We need to

slow.

things.

down.

And prioritize quality over quantity.

(2) Produce Meaningful Surveys

Expanding on the point above, the most recent examples of our District’s difficulties in this area are Building Thinking Classroom (there was no survey other than the one conducted by BHCW and the DEI Survey, which was laughable. The District literally quashed a GL student’s efforts at conducting a survey on BTC.

Proper surveys aim to get feedback on how your stakeholders feel about something – they aren’t there to trick people into saying what you want them to say. An honest survey would give us valuable feedback on what works well and what doesn’t

(3) Use Measurable Goals in our Strategic Planning Documents all the way down to the Classroom

When Dr. Varley discusses the Districts’ successes, it is almost impossible to understand what she means when you look at the data. Proficiencies are down, and variables you would expect to have improved as a result of DEI are unchanged . The strategic plan is a list of what the District did wrapped in buzzwords, but no data supports whether those tasks achieved any meaningful outcomes. The Strategic Plan update has no measurable goal or objective demonstrating success or what success would look like.

It reads as :

Do this *vague buzzword* thing to accomplish this *vague buzzword* thing within our District.

Nowhere does the document state anything remotely resembling: “BHPSNJ will seek to achieve x% of Math proficiency through this intervention.”

This approach sets anything the District does up to be success as it can be spun after the fact.

What we are using as measurement also needs to be defined.

As we saw with the Proficiency Report debacle, the District used a completely different data set than the data set the community expressed concerns about. Additionally, they used no comparative data from within that data set so the community had no way of evaluating year to year trends with the exception of a small AP cohort.

This is just not how serious organizations operate.

(4) Partner with Universities to develop meaningful tools

New Jersey has some excellent Universities (go Pirates) with many students looking for research projects – we can use these resources to educate central administration on what a proper survey can look like and create a meaningful culture of evidence-based decision-making.

(5) Publish ALL REPORTS on the District Website

There is no reason not to provide the community with the same information the BOE gets. One issue with the BOE Subcommittee game is that it is a way of hiding information the public could use in coming to an honest evaluation on how the District is doing. The proficiency report saga led to about three OPRA requests and multiple emails that I am sure the District will use in lamenting on and on about how many OPRA requests they receive and how much time they are wasting. Posting all reports and attachments from each subcommittee online will reduce OPRA requests and increase the public’s access to important information. A culture of evidence based decision making starts with a commitment to include all stakeholders versus the current practice of informing a select few allies so they can win arguments on social media with bad data no one can verify.

(6) Re-evaluate the internal measures we are using to track proficiency

I’ve already written about how terrible the internal report that “doesn’t exist” was in addressing our proficiency declines, but it did lead to essential questions. As there was no year-to-year comparison, the public cannot determine whether the declines we saw over the last three years within the state data was consistent with internal reporting.

If our internal data is consistent with state data year to year, then all is well, except that it demonstrates the extent to which that report was a white wash.

However, if that data demonstrates consistent performance or improvement, we have a bigger problem. If our internal measures say we are doing great while the state measures we have been consistent with for years before Dr. Varley took over show a decline, we must figure out why and fast.  

We also have to ask why there weren’t any internal measures tracking Science – unless there are, but the data wasn’t presented.

Update (08/23/2023):

Soon after this article came out, Dr. Varley provided more evidence of our need to improve in this area.

Read Part One: What We Can Do to Reverse The Berkeley Heights Declines in Math, Science, and ELA Part 1: The Budget

All Articles About Proficiencies