Englewood Cliffs, NJ, a K-8 school district, is located in an upper class suburb of New York City, near to the George Washington Bridge. Dr. Philomena Pezzano, Superintendent, (see her comments in the last chapter of this book) came to Englewood after being Acting Superintendent in Newburgh, NY, where she had charge over the Balanced Curriculum development and implementation. Planning for curriculum writing started in the Spring of 2001 with curriculum in English Language Arts developed during the summer 2001. The first year of implementation was 2001-2002 in Reading Language Arts, with assessments developed during the summer of 2002. Results of the state tests – the ESPA for grade 4 and the GEPPA for grade 8 are given below, with students identified as second language learners and those in special education excluded from the analysis.

For eighth grade, students in Level 3, the highest level, jumped from 5% before the project started to 27% after two years of implementation. For grade 4, there was little change during the first year of implementation. The second and third years showed marked improvement and by 2004 80% of the fourth graders were scoring at the test’s top level.

Figure 11: