By Tom Jordan
The Rockville Centre School District earned another notch in its belt when South Side High School seniors topped both state and national averages on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) test for the Class of 2000.
The SAT is the admissions exam most often taken by college-bound students on the East Coast. Verbal and math portions are scored on a scale of 200 to 800. This fall, a record 1.3 million students throughout the country took the SAT exam.
South Side's Class of 2000 averaged a score of 524 in verbal, and a whopping 552 in math. The average scores for New York State are 494 for verbal and 506 for math. The national averages are 505 and 514, respectively. The upswing to 514 among America's students represents the highest level in 30 years.
"We're proud of our students' performance," said South Side principal Carol Burris. "We attribute it to the hard work of all the teachers and of the students, as well. The students at South Side High School take very challenging courses."
Superintendent of Schools, Dr. William Johnson, called the results "consistent with the expectations we have for kids" and a "residual effect" of the district's efforts to prepare students for the new state Regents standards, but said the district doesn't necessarily use SAT scores as a measure of how the school is performing. "The school system is focused on content, and not just on SAT scores," Dr. Johnson said.
The higher-than-average SAT scores continue the trend of village schools performing above state and national levels. Some recent examples:
-Last June, results showed that fourth graders from the five village public elementary schools aced the state's new English Language Arts test, which is used to indicate a student's future success at the high school level in Regents testing. The district's mean score (684) placed fifth among the 53 districts tested in Nassau County. The statewide average on the ELA was 652. Of the 273 Rockville Centre fourth graders to be tested, 91 percent either met or exceeded state standards. The previous year, that percentage was 81.
-School report cards for the 1999 school year, prepared by the State Education Department annually to help school administrators measure the performance of their schools against others throughout the state, showed that village students met or exceeded Regents standards in every category.
Scores were through the roof among fourth graders in both math and English testing, surpassing state standards at 94 percent and 81 percent, respectively. The state averages were 67 percent for math and 48 percent for English.
Eighth graders fared well, too, with 70 percent meeting or exceeding state requirements in math and 78 percent doing so in English. Those percentages were far higher than the averages among state schools: 38 percent and 48 percent.
District report cards for the 2000 school year will be released next June.
-Rockville Centre graduated 80 percent of its 255 seniors in 1999 with Regents diplomas, and 94 percent of its graduates went on to college. The 246 members of the Class of 2000 graduated with Regents diplomas at an 82 percent rate.
-South Side High School placed 23 among the nation's 25,000-plus high schools in terms of quality of education, according to a poll by Newsweek released last March. The Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureatte coursed offered by the school were cited as the main reasons for the high rank.
