The district lists 11 ways it will review the new assessment model. It sets no targets, no review date and no plan for public reporting. A parent asked the Board of Education on Sept. 24 to add all three.
East Brunswick High School and Churchill Junior High School have no separate midterm and final exam periods this school year. Instead, students take tests, cumulative assessments, lab practicals, writing tasks and projects throughout each marking period, according to the district’s frequently asked questions document.
The district has explained the change at length, in that eight-page FAQ and in a presentation to the Board of Education on Aug. 20. Both describe what the district will look at when it reviews the new model. Neither says what results would count as success, when the review will take place, or whether its findings will be made public.
That gap was the subject of public comment at the board’s Sept. 24 meeting. A parent told the board they were not asking it to call the new model wrong, and said it might prove successful. The parent asked the board to request clear criteria for success, a timeline for evaluation, public reporting, and criteria for when adjustments should be considered. They also asked that the district decide how it will judge the change before the results are known.
Why the district made the change
East Brunswick High School Principal Dr. Edward Bucior presented the district’s reasons to the board on Aug. 20, according to the meeting’s minutes. His slides are attached to those minutes and are also on the meeting video. They carried the subtitle “Maintaining rigor. Improving assessment. Protecting instructional time.” They ended: “We are not asking less of our students. We are asking our assessments to tell us more.”
The presentation leaned on the district’s own grade data. According to the slides:
- Exam performance fell below marking-period performance “in every department,” consistently across all four marking periods.
- 27% of students failed at least one final exam, and 17% failed at least one midterm.
- More than a third of students in the building were already exempt from at least one final. Students in AP courses who take the AP exam have been excused from the local final.
The FAQ adds that exam scores lowered some students’ final course grades “by as much as five points.” That raised questions, it says, about whether a single high-stakes exam measured “the same learning demonstrated over time.” The slides and FAQ do not say which school year the failure figures describe.
Time was the second argument. The FAQ says the two exam periods took about eight school days to administer. Counting review days, makeups and schedule changes, they cost 12 to 16 days of instruction. State testing takes another five to seven days, which the district cannot remove.
The presentation also argued that the exams were not the source of East Brunswick’s academic rigor. The slides report that 75% of students take at least one Honors or AP course. Students took more than 1,900 AP exams, with a 94% pass rate. One slide asked: “If our strongest academic students are already exempt from a traditional final, is the existence of the exam itself really what creates rigor?”
The presentation also cited published research on classroom feedback, repeated quizzing and test anxiety in support of the change.
The FAQ says the district compared its practice with other districts. Among the comparable large districts it reviewed in Middlesex County, it found East Brunswick was the only one still holding a separately scheduled midterm period. The FAQ does not name the districts.
The FAQ also lists the alternatives the district weighed:
- keeping the old model
- reducing the exams’ weight
- shortening the exam schedule
- dropping midterms but keeping finals
- using projects, portfolios and performance tasks
The district rejected a lighter-weight exam, the FAQ says, because it would still require dedicated testing days, review time and makeups. It would also still deliver results late in the course.
What changed for students
Under the grading policy in force before this month, each marking period of a full-year high school course counted for 20% of the final grade. The midterm and the final counted for 10% each. Seniors with an A-minus average and at least a B in the fourth marking period could skip the final.
Under the new model, each of the four marking periods counts for 25% of the final grade, according to the FAQ. Common assessments and other tests are folded into those marking-period grades.
The FAQ says the change “does not eliminate summative assessments.” “The purpose is not to assess students less,” it says. “It is to assess students more effectively and at points when the results can still be used to support their learning.”
An administrative decision, then board votes
The decision to end separate exam periods was described at the Aug. 20 meeting as an administrative one. During the discussion, a board member said the change was not a board decision and had been approved through the board’s curriculum committee. The same board member said the district could have been more proactive by presenting before the decision was made.
The board then acted on the calendar and the grading policy.
- Sept. 10, calendar: the board approved a revised 2026–27 school calendar by unanimous roll call, according to draft minutes of that meeting included in the Sept. 24 agenda packet. The calendar removes midterms in January and finals in June at both schools, and turns January’s exam half-days into full school days.
- Sept. 10, policy: the same draft minutes record the board’s unanimous first-reading approval of a revised grading policy, Policy 2624.
- Sept. 24: the agenda listed the revised Policy 2624 for second reading and a new Regulation 2624 for first reading. The packet’s marked-up copy of the policy strikes the midterm and final exam weighting. The meeting recording shows the board approving that item, together with the Sept. 10 minutes, in one roll-call vote. The vote was 8-0, with one member absent.
The revised policy does not itself state the 25% marking-period weighting described in the FAQ.
How the district says it will judge the change
The FAQ says the new model will be reviewed using “multiple measures.” It lists 11:
- student performance on common assessments
- course grades
- performance by learning standard
- consistency across course sections
- AP and state assessment results
- results across student groups
- curriculum pacing and coverage
- opportunities for intervention and reteaching
- student and teacher feedback
- assessment workload
- instructional time recovered
The FAQ says the model can be adjusted. Possible changes include how often assessments are given, their cumulative components, rubrics and department expectations. That, it says, requires “ongoing monitoring, reflection, and a willingness to make adjustments when the evidence supports them.”
The question came up at the Aug. 20 meeting. A board member asked what the district would use to determine whether the new approach was working. An administrator responded that comparing students under the old and new systems would be difficult, because the exams are different. The administrator said the district could instead measure whether students are progressing against learning standards.
How families and students were consulted
At the board’s July 23 meeting, a curriculum committee report said feedback from students, parents, teachers and administrators suggested traditional exams may not always accurately reflect student learning. The report said exam preparation and testing took about 16 instructional days.
The Aug. 20 slides describe consultation with about 100 student leaders on the principal’s advisory council. The students were asked what midterms are for and whether they reflect learning.
At the Aug. 20 meeting, the district said a school-based committee had included some parents, students, teachers, administrators and supervisors. It also said no survey was sent out.
The parent who spoke Sept. 24 said they learned of the change in July. They said they had since exchanged emails with administrators, met with high school representatives, and reviewed the August presentation and the FAQ. The parent said the broader community was not surveyed before the decision. They also said the detailed board presentation came after families had already been informed.
The open question
The district has told families what it will look at: 11 measures, from course grades to recovered class time. It has not published what results it expects on any of them, or when it will review the change. It has also not said whether that review will be presented in public.
