By Matt Hampton
In Franklin Square, already high test scores have held steady or dropped only slightly in most cases. The biggest drop was a half-percentage-point downtick in the number of fourth-graders who met or exceeded the state standards with scores at the highest two levels of the state’s four-level grading system. Last year, 98.6 percent of fourth-graders passed, and this year it was 98.1 percent. The proportion of third-graders who did so stayed the same as last year, at 99.6 percent.
Fifth-graders, meanwhile, improved, with 97.9 percent scoring at Level 3 or 4, up from 96.8 percent last year. The passing rate for sixth-graders dropped one-tenth of a percentage point, to 99.6 percent from last year’s 99.7.
The numbers are so close — and so high — that administrators see them as a resounding victory for students. “We certainly understand the math curriculum in New York state,” said Julie Soffientini, Franklin Square’s superintendent for curriculum and instruction. “Our students are always well-prepared, and they meet with great success.”
Soffientini said that the state math tests present a unique challenge for teachers because they don’t just cover the topics of one grade level, but are spread across two years. This means that teachers have to work together on an educational program that can span students’ summer breaks. “You’re never doing things in a row, because of the state’s curriculum, so the way we work, we have concepts that are literally targeted month by month,” she said.
Franklin Square students routinely do well on both the English and math tests, but Soffientini said that their high scores are no reason to think that the tests have gotten too easy. “I think that the state raised the bar a few years ago, and people have steadily risen to the bar,” she said. “The idea is not to have children fail. If you have children passing, it’s good instruction.”
In Elmont, two age groups saw substantial improvement, and two others had incremental increases. Third-graders met or exceeded state standards 94.3 percent of the time, compared with last year’s 92.9 percent, while fourth-graders improved slightly, with 90 percent passing; 89.7 percent did so last year. Fifth-graders improved markedly, with 92 percent passing, 2.7 percentage points higher than last year, and sixth-graders saw an even bigger jump in the passing rate, from 86.6 percent to 90.3.
“We do believe that our math assessments are the result of a very focused, standards-based curriculum,” said Kathy Safrey, Elmont’s director of curriculum and instruction. “We have a curriculum map that our teachers have, and teach to, and that map is revised every single year.”
Safrey chalked almost all of the improvements up to the work put in by teachers, but she added that technology and the involvement of parents and administrators play an important role as well. “We truly believe that the results are due very much to the dedication of the administrators, teachers, parents and the kids putting in the work,” she said.
In the Sewanhaka Central High School District, the results improved dramatically over last year’s, with students in seventh grade seeing a 4.5 percentage-point jump in the proportion who scored at Level 3 or 4, from 89.5 percent to 94 percent. The improvement among eighth-graders was even more impressive — almost 10 percentage points, from 82.2 percent passing last year to 91.6 percent this year.
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