HOWELL – A significant portion of the latest Freehold Regional High School District Board of Education meeting dealt with the students’ performance on the 2025 New Jersey Graduation Proficiency Assessment.
According to NJ.gov, the NJGPA is a test that is administered to students in grade 11 to meet the state graduation assessment requirement and test each student’s graduation readiness in English Language Arts (ELA) and Math.
Director of Student Services Dr. Bruce Henecker gave a presentation, explaining that graduation readiness for each student taking the NJGPA is assessed differently in Math and ELA, as ELA is held to the grade 10 standards, while Math is held to proficiency standards set for Algebra 1 and Geometry.
The district greatly exceeded the state average percentage of graduation ready students in both categories, he said.
They also widened the gap that the district had over the state average last year. The state average for graduation readiness in ELA is 80.7 percent, while the Freehold Regional High School District had 88.9 percent of students show that they are graduation ready. A similar result showed in math, as 75.3 percent of the district’s students proved they are graduation ready, compared to the state average of 58 percent.
It was mentioned several times during the meeting by Superintendent Dr. Nicole Hazel and by Henecker that the school district had poured more resources into the math departments the previous year and has been making a concentrated effort in that area with the hopes of boosting graduation readiness.
One part of this effort included hiring a new math teacher in each of the schools to help reduce class sizes, according to Hazel.
Henecker believes that this effort has begun to pay dividends as the district’s graduation readiness percentage in math rose from 68.5 percent in 2024 to 75.3 percent in 2025, a rise of 6.8 percentage points in just one year.
The NJGPA wasn’t the only state assessment discussed at the meeting. In addition to the NJGPA, English language learning students take the ACCESS 2.0 ELL, a test used to track their progress in getting an effective grip of the English language. Students who score a 4.5 on the test and have other criteria are eligible to be reclassified and taken out of the ELL programs.
According to Henecker’s presentation, the district has seen a steady rise in students testing well enough to leave the program over the last five years. In 2020, five students tested well enough to leave the program. That number has steadily increased over the years, leading to 26 students testing well enough to opt out in 2025. The district has strategies to further the growth of both its graduation readiness in ELA and Math, as well as having more students test out of the ELL program through the ACCESS test. Henecker said those pillars are aligned curriculum, instruction and assessments, culture of assessment and accountability, and providing comprehensive professional development in addition to targeted intervention programs in areas of student need.
