i'm sorry, but that last line just cracks me up. thanks for doing the math for us, apparently a large percentage of jc residents need that.

Charter high school gets OK to start middle school

Thursday, December 20, 2007
By KEN THORBOURNE
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Despite landing on the "schools in need of improvement" list this year, the state has granted C.R.E.A.T.E. Charter High School in Jersey City permission to start a middle school.

"I feel great," said school founder and Ward C Councilman Steve Lipski about the state Department of Education's decision to amend the school's charter to allow for the middle school.

"We will be able to provide solid preparation for high school," Lipski added. "My ultimate goal is to go all the way down to preschool."

Lipski said he is still in negotiations for a location for the new middle school, which would open next September.

Opened in September, 2001, the 390-student high school received an educational black eye this year when, based on standards set by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the Lembeck Avenue school was classified as a "school in need of improvement."

According to school officials, 54 percent of last year's 11th-graders passed the standardized language arts test, while 23 percent passed the math exam. In Jersey City at large, 63.6 percent of students passed the language arts tests and 49.5 percent passed the math exam.

Lipski sees these figures as more reason to expand.

"Personally, I am not happy with the test scores, but I am also realistic," said Lipski, a Dickinson High alumni who holds a master's degree in education from Seton Hall University and is working toward his doctorate in educational administration at Columbia University.

"The two feeder schools for our high school have some of the lowest test scores in the state," Lipski said. "Over the last two years, only 2.5 percent of the eighth-graders who came into our school passed the eighth-grade proficiency test in math. That means 97.5 percent didn't."