State releases math, ELA assessment results

Oceanside and Island Park’s test scores fell in many areas from last year. Here, all the scores in white are less than the 2011 county average.

Alex Costello/Herald

The assessment scores for grades three through eight that were recently released by the New York State Education Department has the Oceanside School District reviewing its curriculum and teaching practices.

While five of the six grades that were tested raised their average scores in mathematics in Oceanside from the scores last year, an equal number of grades saw a lower average score in English Language Arts. The Island Park school district saw a decrease from last year in four school grades for ELA and three for math.

Levels 3 and 4 represent passing scores for the assessment while Levels 1 and 2 are failing. Last summer, the state decided to raise the passing score of the tests, meaning that more students would fall into failing levels than districts were accustomed to.

“It’s hard to compare one year to the next, some of them go up and some of them go down,” said Oceanside Superintendent Dr. Herb Brown.

Brown explained that he meets with all the Oceanside teachers every September to go over how their students did and discuss what the teachers’ strengths and weaknesses were. They then make collaborative decisions on how the curriculum could be improved, such as adding focus onto areas that did not score as well as the teachers hoped.

Officials from the Island Park School District were unavailable for comment.

Oceanside’s average assessments were below the county average for four school grades in ELA and three in math, while Island Park’s averages were below county average for two school grades in ELA and four grades in math.

“We look at how we’re doing in Oceanside and how we can improve,” Brown emphasized. “We have our own math curriculum and our English Language Arts curriculum, and these programs can be improved by us.”

Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum Bob Fenter said that determining the reasons for the scores would be a priority in the next few weeks for Oceanside. “What we’re doing right now is looking closely at the data, we’re coming up with a plan,” Fenter said. “It requires a lot of attention and we want to do it right.”

Fenter said that one possible reason for changes in the averages could be that the both the ELA and math exams in grades 3, 5 and 7 were longer than previous years. “That’s part of our analysis, to determine what role, if any, those changes may have made,” Fenter said. “So that’s part of the equation.”