BOE recognizes student assessment perfection

Eighteen students were recognized at the Jan. 28 meeting of the West Milford Board of Education for earning a perfect score on the 2019 New Jersey School Learning Assessment tests.

The NJSLA is the state's replacement for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, assessment, and was implemented by the state Department of Education in 2019.

While the online platform remains the same, the NJSLA takes less time to administer, and has fewer questions that the state selected from the PARCC assessment to use on its own exam.

The new assessment still meets state assessment requirements for common core standards.

It is, in essence, a shorter version of the PARCC.

West Milford Superintendent of Schools Dr Alex Anemone announced the news to the board and public during the meeting.

Anemone quoted famed football coach Vince Lombardi in recognizing the students achievements.

"'Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence,'" Anemone said, quoting the legendary coach.

"What we have here are some students who caught that perfection," he said.

The students took the NJSLA in 2019, and results were recently received by the district showed that 18 West Milford students received a perfect score of 850 on either the Math or English Language Arts portion of the exam.

Anemone then called up each of the students by name to be recognized by the school board and the public, while Director of Education Daniel Novak presented the students with a certificate from the district.

Students who earned a perfect NJSLA score were:

Arden Edelstein - ELA, Lauren Harmen - Math, David VanTassel - Math, Lucas Cardona - ELA, Megan Seidner - ELA, Sierra Dages - ELA, Amanda Dellagicoma - ELA, Nadia Felipe - ELA, Connor Gargiulo - ELA, Matthew Landoline - ELA, Sarah Pilaar - ELA, Sarah Chandler - ELA, Brianna Hazen - ELA, Ryan Humble - ELA, Riley Lane - ELA, Leah Payne - ELA, Tori Roberto - ELA, and Maya Rovny - ELA.

Anemone said that some of the students were unable to attend the meeting due to participation in extracurricular activity groups and youth sports that were also scheduled that evening, and said they would receive their certificates from their teachers later in the week.