Here's why state finds Valley Stream 24 Brooklyn Ave.’s special ed. kids needing improvement

It’s not a list any school or school district wants to see its name on.

The state Education Department’s needs-improvement list, of schools in the bottom 5 percent of academic performance, is published every year, and the Valley Stream District 24 Brooklyn Avenue School made the list for 2022-23.

The aim of the accountability rating, mandated by federal and state law, is to identify struggling schools whose low-performing students are in need of extra support and to push school administrators to taking steps to improve performance.

The state held off on releasing its ratings over the past three years due to the pandemic, amid widespread classroom disruption during which state testing was either out of the question, or its results too incomplete for meaningful evaluation.

This year, the listing resumed under a revised version for student performance in the 2022-2023 academic year. And its results may have come as jolting news to parents at Valley Stream District 24 when Brooklyn Avenue School joined 15 other individual schools on Long Island in poor academic standing.

What the ranking actually means

First thing, Brooklyn Avenue’s ranking does not speak to the state of academic performance for the entire school. It specifically singled out Brooklyn Avenue School’s special education student population as a “target support and improvement” population, one in apparent need of additional aid to raise testing outcomes.

This is usually interpreted as a sign that these students are faring poorly in the classroom based on metrics including performance on state test scores, chronic absenteeism, and testing participation. However, it’s unclear whether Brooklyn Avenue’s special student population has faced a considerable dip in reading, mathematics, and science skills, noted JP O’Hare, a state education department media liaison. At least from this classification alone.

What this label does, in this case, tell us is that the “school did not have enough student records to generate a weighted average achievement measure,” said O’Hare. “So, a determination was not able to be made.”

In other words, Brooklyn Avenue’s special education students were tagged with poor academic performance because so few opted into taking state test assessments. This shortage of test participation by default triggered the state to find these students failing to make measurable progress in achieving academic proficiency.

A classification that Superintendent Unal Karakas vehemently disagrees with.

“The designation is based on a limited data set on state testing in one school and does not reflect a complete picture of the high-quality teaching and learning that occurs throughout our district,” said Karakas.

And Valley Stream 24 is not alone. Other otherwise well-preforming elementary schools across Long Island like West Islip’s Manetuck Elementary School found themselves in the same bind, spurring debate about the fairness of the ranking.

Even though, by law, school districts across the state like in Valley Stream 24 are required to assess 95 percent of its students’ state test-taking performance, Karakas joined a growing chorus of school leaders who’ve called for overhauls to the state’s classification system.

“The state’s designation is not an accurate or true representation of student achievement across a district or a particular school,” said Karakas. “Our commitment to excellence encompasses all our students, and we are diligently working toward continuous progress for every subgroup of learners.”

Regents tests come under fire

The role of Regents exams in evaluating the academic progress of students has stood on shaky ground for some time. State education officials have argued that state exams have survived as long as they have because of their ability to provide an “objective measure” of student’s skill and learning comprehension.

Nevertheless, a strong cohort of parents in Valley Stream and across the Island have long lamented that their children’s education has been shortchanged by the seemingly overbearing emphasis placed on performance-based assessments.

Superintendents across the Valley Stream school districts have not been shy in boasting about students’ performance on state exams and graduation rates. Yet in conversation, they’ve harbored growing skepticism about the accuracy of these tests in understanding the student’s complete learning growth and potential.

Providing the “most well-rounded education” for students, noted Karakas, can’t be bound solely to how well a student takes a state test.

“State assessments are only one part of a student’s academic achievement and must be reviewed with other data — project-based learning and local assessments — to inform our important work with students,” said Valley Stream 13 Superintendent Judith LaRocca last year.

Where to go from here?

The state education department is beginning to look into alternatives to complement rather than scrap its traditional notions of performance-based assessment. The department announced a fall pilot program to allow select school districts to offer other ways to prove understanding and proficiency in math, science, and English aside from test-taking exams.

Have an opinion on this article? Send an email to jlasso@liherald.com.