The first group of students required to pass Common Core-aligned Regents exams in order to graduate from high school will be the class of 2017.

Local reaction

East Meadow Superintendent Louis DeAngelo expressed his satisfaction with how students fared in their initial exposure to the more rigorous curriculum. “We’re pleased that our East Meadow students performed above the state average,” he said. “We are confident that increased student exposure to the new curriculum will generate still greater levels of mastery on the New York state assessments.”

In every grade, in both the math and ELA exams, the district’s passing rate exceeded the state average by at least 10 percentage points. The top performers were third grade math students, who had a passing rate of 61.7 percent, far surpassing the state average of 34.2 percent.

The lowest passing percentage — 38.8 percent — was in seventh grade math, though it was still well above the state average of 27.7 percent.

In the 2011-12 results, the district did not have a passing rate below 70 percent in either subject at any grade level.

Roxanne Rose, the immediate past president of the district’s PTA Council, said the next step is for school officials to use the results as a springboard in preparing students for next year’s assessments. “The question becomes, what are we going to do for our children this year that we didn’t do for our children last year?” said Rose, who has a daughter who is entering seventh grade in the fall. “We have our base, so what happens next?”

But Rose added that it is the responsibility of not only teachers and administrators, but parents as well, to properly prepare their children. “If you raise the bar higher, then the parents also have to step up to the plate,” she said.