High School Report Cards

          The two high school report cards I will be comparing are East Side High School in Newark, NJ and Harrison High School in Harrison, NJ. I attended E.S.H.S way back in 1993. I currently substitute teach at Harrison H.S about once or twice a week. I was a little surprised to see ranking results for my old high school. Just looking at the percentage rate of students planning to attend college was scary. I know it's been like 18 years from when I attended, but from what I can recall we had our class valedictorian attending Harvard. Some other top ramking graduates also were accepted to Brown and Princeton, not counting the many others that went to State Universities/Colleges.  I do remember my graduating class consisted of a little more than 400 students. However, in regards to Harrison H.S., I am also quite surprised at the percentage of graduating students who are planning to pursue a college education.
            The report card results we are comparing are based on 2009-2010 scholastic year under the student performance indicators option (assessments). Let's start by comparing HSPA results in Language Arts Literacy in E.S.H.S. We had 310 students that tested with a proficient score of 47.7%. In Harrison H.S. we had 161 students that tested with a proficient score of 78.3%. These results are significantly higher by 31%. However, when we look at HSPA  results in Mathematics we have E.S.H.S. with 307 students that tested with a proficient score of 47.9% and in Harrison H.S. we have 160 students that tested with a proficient score of 56.9%. These results have a lesser difference of 9%. When I see these results it's quite obvious that Harrison H.S. students are performing better in HSPA. I do want make note that Harrison H.S. had almost half the student population that E.S.H.S. had. Regardless of this fact E.S.H.S still does not reach a proficient score of over 50% in this area. Looking at graduation rates, E.S.H.S. has a 78.9% rate and Harrison H.S. has a 83.8% rate versus the state's rate at 90.6%. We can see that Harrison H.S. only beat E.S.H.S by 5%. When we look at SAT scores, E.S.H.S. had 119 students taking test with an average score of 399 in math, 381 in verbal, and 386 in essay portion. Harrison H.S. had 78 students taking test with an average score of 459 in math, 420 in verbal, and 424 in essay portion. We can see a difference of 137 points higher by Harrison H.S. students. Surprisingly, for advanced subject placement classes we have a interesting disparity. In E.S.H.S. they offer A.P Biology class in which 11 students were members. There is also a Calculus class in which 9 students were members and English Comp. who had 15 students. In Harrison H.S. A.P Biology class in not even offered. They do have 14 students in a Calculus class and 0 in English Comp. class.
             Regarding attendance rates both schools are approximately at 94%. Dropout rates are at 2.0% for E.S.H.S. (mostly consisting of Asian/White/Hispanic). Harrison H.S. has 0.0%  drop out rate which is awesome! Graduation rates are pretty much equal for both schools at 96.0%. Again, it's sad to see that post graduation plans for both schools are not that promising. We have E.S.H.S. with 21.3% of graduates planning to attend a 4 year college, and 39.9% planning to attend community 2 year college. In Harrison H.S. numbers are slightly higher with 36.5% planning to attend 4 year colleges and 47.7% planning to attend community 2 year college. I must add that this data was surprising, but I do recall certaing factors that should be spoken about as well. I do have to believe that their are certain extenuating circumstances that existed and I'm sure still exist in E.S.H.S that have a reflection of these scores/rates. E.S.H.S. was known for accepting students from all districts due to their special education and inclusion classes. This fact alone contributes to the overpopulation of students. E.S.H.S. has almost double the amount of students in Harrison. These two cities are neighboring cities in which they are much alike. Both schools have diverse nationalities and environments, but the huge difference is the volume of students.