NYSED: Two North Bellmore schools need improvement

The New York State Education Department says two schools in the North Bellmore District need to improve academically, according to new federal guidelines, but school officials say the district’s high number of test opt-outs is painting a skewed picture of its actual academic progress. 

The Education Department placed Park Avenue School and Martin Avenue School in the Targeted Support and Improvement, or TSI, category, for schools that have not met academic standards for a specific sub-group of students. The label is part of the department’s new academic assessment systems adopted in January 2018 under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. Park Avenue and Martin Avenue are among 30 schools on Long Island to receive the TSI designation.

The state assessments are based on a number of factors (see box), the most heavily weighted of which is student performance on state standardized tests. In North Bellmore’s case, NYSED identified its “disabled” student sub-group at Park Avenue and its “economically disadvantaged” student sub-group at Martin Avenue as underperforming.

State Education Law Section 4401 defines a student with a disability as one “who because of mental, physical or emotional reasons can only receive appropriate educational opportunities from a program of special education.”

The state defines economically disadvantaged students as “those who participate in economic assistance programs such as free or reduced-price lunch, food stamps, foster care or receive cash or medical assistance.”

In a Feb. 14 letter to the North Bellmore community, school officials argued that the designations were “invalid due to the district’s high state assessment refusal rate and the minimal sample size that comprise the aforementioned sub-groups.” At Martin Avenue, 66 percent of its economically disadvantaged students opted out of state assessments, and at Park Avenue, 88 percent of its disabled students opted out, the letter read.

“In one case it was four students that took the test. In another case it was 10,” the district’s assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, Janet Pollitt, said at the Board of Education meeting on March 5. “That is not representative of our whole.”

Superintendent Marie Testa said that despite NYSED’s designation, the sub-groups in question have showcased “positive growth” on district assessments. “The TSI [designation] affects . . . people’s understanding of the great schools that we have,” she said. “It’s not fair to our teachers, our administrators or our students to label students as needing growth when that is not true.”

To help schools and districts develop plans to improve student performance, NYSED will award $25,000 in Title I School Improvement Grant funding to each newly identified TSI district and school to fund a review process and develop an improvement plan for the 2020-21 school year. (North Bellmore is receiving $75,000.)

Additionally, Testa said the district is working with local real estate brokers to present highlights of the district to prospective families looking to move to North Bellmore. “When they Google us, they come across some of the ratings that don’t show us in the same light in which we’re performing,” she said. The strategy will allow agents “to confidently and comprehensively speak about our district.”

North Bellmore parent Jeanette Deutermann, founder of Long Island Opt Out, a group that helped spur the nationwide movement of student test boycotts, agreed the NYSED designation is flawed since the new guidelines conflate test participation with school performance.

“One has nothing to do with the other,” she said. “This is a bureaucracy problem — it shouldn’t be put on the backs of kids.”

The district will soon conduct needs assessments at each of the two schools, Pollit said, and is working to develop an improvement plan, which would take effect in September.