Making strides at Memorial

Earlier this year, the state cited Memorial Junior High School as a School in Need of Improvement because of low test scores among special education students on the ELA exam.

Herald File Photo

With the New York state assessments less than a month away, Valley Stream Central High School District officials are keeping their fingers crossed that all students in seventh- and eighth-grade do well.

Last year’s results put Memorial Junior High School on the state Education Department’s School in Need of Improvement list, because students in special education did not meet expectations on the English language arts exam. Yet, school officials say, the performance of that one group does not reflect the overall academic progress of students at Memorial and throughout the district.

“I hope it’s not given us a negative viewpoint,” Principal Anthony Mignella said, “because we’re not a failing school.”

Superintendent Dr. Bill Heidenreich said that the school’s inclusion on the list, because of the performance of one “subgroup,” is a direct result of federal No Child Left Behind legislation, which mandates state testing in ELA and math in grades 3-8. “That’s really the punitive nature of NCLB,” he said. “You have a handful of students that have not met the state standards, yet the overwhelming majority of students have. The school gets a negative label. It’s misleading.”

However, school officials are taking this issue seriously, and have implemented several measures to help special education students do better. A Saturday Academy program began in the fall and will continue right up until the tests, which will be held in the middle of April. Dr. Thomas Troisi, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, said that the program meets for an hour and a half each Saturday morning and is led by district teachers.

Regular attendance is about 30 students each week. “We encourage certain students to come,” he said, noting that Saturday Academy is not mandatory.

Troisi said that the teachers focus on the literacy skills that are tested, and also help students with test taking strategies. He noted that the Saturday Academy instructors have loads of information on their students, including past test results and observations from classroom teachers, to help meet each child’s individual needs.