Summary:
The Penns Grove-Carneys Point Regional School District in New Jersey has only one middle school, Penns Grove Middle School, which serves students in grades 6-8. The school has consistently ranked in the bottom 10-15% of New Jersey middle schools over the past 3 school years, with a ranking between 706-715 out of 743-752 schools.
Penns Grove Middle School's performance on state assessments is significantly below state averages. In 2024-2025, the percentage of students proficient or better in English Language Arts ranged from 13.6% to 19.2% across grades, compared to the state average of 56.1% to 57.1%. In Mathematics, the school's proficiency rates ranged from 2.9% to 10.3%, compared to the state average of 20.7% to 39.8%. The school's performance on the Algebra I assessment is more mixed, with 66.6% of 8th graders proficient or better, compared to the state average of 72.7%. However, the school's overall Algebra I proficiency rate is only 10.3%, suggesting a significant achievement gap.
The school's high percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (77.2% in 2023-2024) and its relatively high chronic absenteeism rate (14.9% in 2023-2024) suggest that the school may be serving a population of students with significant socioeconomic challenges. Despite these challenges, the school's per-student spending for the 2018-2019 school year was $11,510, which is above the state average, and the student-teacher ratio is 11.9, which is relatively low compared to state averages. These factors raise questions about the effective use of resources and the need to explore other factors that may be contributing to the school's challenges.
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