State Assessments

Many of our parents received a letter recently from Mr. O'Brien, the Principal of the Warren Hills HS. The letter discussed how the HS had not met Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in one out of 40 different sub-groups. The letter discussed a number of actions that the HS has taken to overcome this AYP setback. I wanted to let everyone know that we have been doing the activities mentioned in the letter for quite some time. Students at Oxford have enjoyed a double block of Language Arts for many years--longer then many can remember--and our recent curriculum mapping and revisions(in conjunction with the Warren Hills Cluster schools) have allowed us to ensure the highest quality of instruction and the most up-to-date curriculum. As part of our on-going professional development plan, we have been working with all of our students to improve their writing. We continue to do this by instituting the MyAccess writing program, developing our writing skills in the primary grades with 6 Plus 1 writing and through increased vigor to improve our writing!

Oxford students continue to demonstrate a high level of academic success as they enter either the Vo-Tech or Warren Hills High School. This is a true testament to our students, their parents, our staff and the programs we use here at OCS.Till next time...

School Violence?

If you looked at the Newark Star-Leger today you may have seen an article about the drop in school violence in our state over the past year. However, what might have also caught your eye was the chart on page 34 that says that our school had 12 incidents of violence last year. 12?! Violence!?

As the report is put together the category of "violence" gets a little convoluted. Last year we had two incidents where one student was physically involved with another student. Both resulted in suspension. The remaining 10 incidents involved cases of bullying. In all ten cases there was never a physical encounter!

The number reported in the state report, 12, is down 7 cases from the previous year and is down from more than 30 incidents four years ago! The programs we have been implementing, the supervision in the halls and the move to make students feel better about themselves and the school have all yielded a very positive result!

Till next time...

This week

This week is an exciting week here at OCS. We have guest author/ artist Dar Hosta, here on Wednesday October 21st. Ms. Hosta has written a number of children's books--and illustrated them as well! She will be here the entire day and will be working on writing skills for our 2-4 grade students.

Speaking of writing...

Soon we will once again be using a web-based writing program called MyAccess. MyAccess is a program that allows students to write essays that are critiqued using stat-of-the-art software. The critiques are based on the holistic scoring rubric used here in NJ to score the NJASK writing samples. This will be another tool for our 5-8 grade teachers and students, as we look to improve our student's writing.

Till next time...

Who wants to win a Million dollars?

I would like to as well, but I only wrote that to get your attention. I wanted to let anyone who reads the blog and was interested in volunteering here at OCS know that we will be having a brief meeting on Thursday, October 22 at 5:00pm here in the school cafeteria. If you have volunteered to be a homeroom assistant, classroom helper, teacher's aide, library volunteer, lunchroom monitor, or all of the above, please join us at this informational meeting.

New safety equipment.

We recently installed a new fire evacuation chair to the second story of our building. The evacuation chair will allow us to assist any disabled student or special needs student during a fire drill or other emergency, quickly and safely. Staff members have been assigned to learn how to use the new equipment so we have another tool to get kids out of the building in an emergency!

A Recent Gallup poll on education

states that 7 out of every 10 parents surveyed said they would be happy if their child went on to be a public school teacher!! Great news on how people feel about their teachers. The survey, found at www.pdkintl.org, asked parents many questions about the educational system and how they felt about their schools. Some of the interesting survey results were the misconceptions that people had about charter schools. Charter schools are public school, they can not charge tuition to students and among many other misconceptions, here in NJ teachers must be certified by the NJ Department of Education.

I will be putting together a similar survey to assess our communities views on OCS in the coming weeks.

Till next time...