Graduation rates rise in Valley Stream

While many districts across New York posted lower or stagnant graduation rates, the Valley Stream Central High School District climbed higher and was once again well above the state average, according to data released by the New York State Education Department last month.

In the 2011-12 school year, 93.2 percent of district students who had started ninth grade in September 2008 received Regents Diplomas or Regents Diplomas with Advanced Designation. The New York state average for the category was 74 percent. The district’s number is up nearly four percentage points from the 2010-11 school year, when it graduated 89.3 percent of students who started ninth grade in September 2007.

“We pride ourselves on maintaining the high graduation rates,” said Tony Iadevaio, Board of Education president. “We want all the kids to graduate and move into the 21st Century with a little bit of knowledge as to what’s going on in the world.”

Superintendent Dr. Bill Heidenreich said there are many factors that contribute to the district’s high graduation rate, but one point, he noted, is that educators devote a lot of time toward working with new entrants to the district. For example, he said, if a student enters the district as a junior and is not on track to graduate, teachers and support staff will work hard to make sure that student knows what they have to do in order to graduate on time.

“We had a concerted effort to reach out to parents and students through our guidance department and through the principals to let parents and students know what it is that they need to do in order to be eligible to graduate,” Heidenreich said. He added that at the end of this past school year, there were a few students who had to pass both the world history and U.S. history Regents exams in order to graduate because they moved into the district without having passed them as underclassmen.

During the course of the year, Heidenreich said, teachers are using “exit tickets” to gage students’ understanding of the material once a lesson is complete. Exit tickets are composed of Regents-modeled questions to prepare students for an upcoming state test.