By Jason Scheer
In a report issued by Standards & Poor¹s School Evaluation Services, the school district was found to have reduced the gap in reading and math proficiency rates by 12.6 percent. The figure represents the largest gap closure of any school on Long Island and the second-highest statewide, behind the Nyack Union Free School District's 23.1 percent.
This was the second year in a row that Malverne managed to close the gap, according to the study. Furthermore, all subgroups within the district showed improved performance. "We're very delighted," said Dr. Mary Ellen Freeley, superintendent of Malverne Schools. "First of all, we're very delighted to make progress, and we¹re delighted to get the recognition from an outside agency."
The study compared results from the 2002-03 and 2003-04 school years. The study's overview says that closing the gap has been a driving force behind educational policy in recent years and has fueled the No Child Left Behind mandates. "It is no mystery that these long-standing achievement gaps exist; they have been well documented by researchers for decades, and their closure is one of the most persistent challenges in American education," the report reads.
The report combines all of the district¹s reading and math proficiency rates into a single indicator known as Reading and Math Proficiency, or RaMP. The RaMP indicator represents the percentage of scores from all reading and math tests that meet or exceed state standards. The same kinds of achievement gaps measured by individual subject-area and grade-level tests are also found when measuring achievement gaps with RaMP. The report uses RaMP to measure overall achievement gaps between different subgroups of students, and to determine whether those achievement gaps are being narrowed.
In total, 295 districts were examined statewide, and only 44 districts closed the gap by more than 5 percent. Including Malverne, nine of the 44 districts are on Long Island. The statewide average for all districts was .6 percent. Thus, the strides made by the Malverne district are substantial and impressive.
"Closing the achievement gap is one of the most persistent challenges in American education today," said William Cox, managing director of Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Services. "Given the complex nature and extreme difficulty in closing these gaps, Standard & Poor's believes it is important to pay tribute to those school districts that have made progress in this area.²
Freeley said it is a school district's responsibility to make sure all of its students are succeeding. That, she said, is the district's focus. "Every child should have the opportunity to excel, and that's really our goal," she said.
For more information about the study, visit www.schoolmatters.com.
Comments about this story? JScheer@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 234.
