Long Beach High School principal rejects student op-ed

Posted Thursday, June 19, 2008 12:00 am

ARIELLA MONTI

When Long Beach High School Principal Nick Restivo rejected her op-ed submission to the school newspaper, new student Mallorie Faubert chose to seek publication elsewhere.

Her controversial article on the school's education standards ran in the June 5 edition of the Long Island Press, as well as on NewsLI.com on May 21.

Faubert moved to Long Beach with her family from a small town outside of Allentown, Pa., five months ago and was excited to spend the last year-and-a-half of high school in a new school. But after a few months, she became disappointed with the quality of her education as compared to her old school, Northwestern Lehigh in New Tripoli. "When I came to the school, I saw some problems and it bothered me," she said.

Her parents encouraged her to voice her concerns through the school newspaper, The Tide, in an editorial piece. Working closely with English teacher and faculty advisor, Joe Jeremias, she collected testing information from the 2006 state school report cards. Along with her own personal observations, she produced a piece which was to be reviewed by Principal Restivo for content and accuracy as per school policy. The principal rejected the article, stating it was too "inflammatory" for production. Using information from her old school, Faubert compared the math and English grades from the state Regents exams and the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) exams.

"According to the 2006 state school report cards ... at Northwestern, 57 percent of the students scored 85 and above in the mathematics testing, while at Long Beach, only 33 percent did," she wrote in her column. "In English, Northwestern had 73 percent scoring 85 and above, Long Beach had only 41 percent."

She went on to acknowledge that the comparison isn't fair because the PSSAs are graded by the state while Regents exams are graded by the student's teachers. "The teachers may be more lenient when grading these tests; they may be more subjective while grading their own students," she wrote.