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Mixed results on East Rockaway, Lynbrook school district scores

ELA and math tests don’t offer a clear picture, local superintendents say

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In the second year of the Common Core curriculum, Lynbrook and East Rockaway both saw mixed results on state standardized tests, with scores rising in all but one grade level on the math exam but sliding downward on the English Language Arts test.

Scores in both districts increased almost across the board in the six math exams, given to third- through eighth-graders, in 2013-14, with passing rates jumping by as much as 22 percentage points in East Rockaway and 20 percentage points in Lynbrook.

The lone grade to see a fall in math test scores and passing percentages — in both districts — was eighth grade. The State Education Department noted this anomaly in a report, published earlier this month, along with the test scores, explaining that it happened across the state, and that the drop did not necessarily equate to a decrease in eight-graders’ understanding of math.

Lynbrook Superintendent Melissa Burak explained that a U.S. Department of Education waiver allowed approximately 50,000 accelerated eighth-grade math students to take high school math Regents exams instead of the state test, in the interest of eliminating unnecessary double testing. Their absence from the state exam results accounted for the statewide drop, Burak said.

Meanwhile, scores on the English exam trended downward for most grades in both Lynbrook and East Rockaway. Only third- and fourth-graders managed to improve in East Rockaway, while Lynbrook’s third- and eighth-graders registered higher passing averages.

Burak said she believed that the improvements in math and the drop in ELA scores was to be expected. “We surmised that math results were going to be better than ELA,” she said, “because the feedback from the kids directly was they thought the math exams were fair.”

The passing rates in both districts remained at or above county and state averages in most categories, with Lynbrook exceeding the state average on all 12 tests and East Rockaway doing so on six of the 12. Lynbrook surpassed the average passing rates in Nassau County on nine of the tests, while East Rockaway did so twice.

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