Kelli Green, the AP program coordinator at the Pinelands Regional School District, reported the district’s results in the 2026 New Jersey Graduation Proficiency Assessment and Advanced Placement exams.

The NJGPA exams in English and math were given to juniors toward the end of the 2025-26 school year. They basically show how many students are ready to meet the state standards for graduation as seniors.

“These are school performance reports that the state sends out,” said Green. “They are really designed for us to use to inform placement, to inform our programs for us to talk about where we as a district need to improve our outcomes, take a look at growth over time, and give you all a bigger picture of what’s happening with our students right now.”

She started off with the numbers for English.

“As you can see, we’re 70% graduation ready with this year’s seniors based on their test scores as 11th-graders towards the end of the year. The county is at 73 and the state is at 76. So we are a little bit behind those two areas, but there is some good news coming up.”

Regarding mathematics, she said, “We are at 44% graduation ready, with the state being at 61. So, once again we’re far behind the state and the county,” which was at 57.

Still, Green said the district was making progress. Last year’s graduation proficiency rate for ELA (English) was 65% and 35.4% for math. She stressed that was a 5% growth in English and an almost 10% growth in math.

“So while we’re still behind the state and county, those are nice little moments of hope and growth, and that’s the trend we’d like to see continue.”

She went on to list the efforts the district was making to further improve test numbers. There was new access to online tools. There had been “high impact tutoring” over the summer. There are “specialized teams” to do targeted interventions. But most importantly, there was some curriculum realignment, especially in math.

“Junior high school this year, their whole focus this year is on math improvement with the idea that will translate up through the grades.”

Then there are extended blocks for both English and math, “going back to that block-and-a-half schedule that we had several years ago to improve the amount of time that we are allowing for instruction in those areas.”

There was better news on the Advanced Placement front.

Green compared the pass rate of students taking AP exams from 2022 to 2026. In 2022 the pass rate was 49%.

“We had a 70% pass rate this year (actually last year, in the 2025-26 school year), which is really impressive. I can’t thank our teachers enough for preparing our kids … but I want to tell you that last year we had 205 students, 459 exams. This year, as of this morning, I have 205 AP students and 486 exams. So even though the district is unable to provide the bill for exams this year (the district used to pay for students’ exams, but no longer does because of budget cuts), the students are committed to making AP success a reality for them. They have stepped forward and paid for their exams. We have had real success, and we will have the most exams taken this year than we’ve ever had, which is a real big win.”

Considering that academic success is related to household income, it isn’t surprising that many students, or actually their parents, have paid for their exams, which can sometimes put students a year or even more ahead of graduation in college. But what about lower-income families?

“I want to just take a minute to plug our AP access fund,” said Green.

Green has set up a $30,000 fundraising goal to help give less-advantaged kids the opportunity to take AP exams. Interested community members can drop off or mail checks to the fund at Pinelands Regional High School, attention Kelli Green.

“We have had some donations, and they really have instantly impacted some of our kids who have come and said, ‘I can’t do this.’ We have found donations and covered some of their expenses; some of them we have covered entirely. We are looking forward to more fundraising.”