Changing Times and Changing Grades

[rr]

A little food for thought for those that automatically go to the 'look at our graduation rate' well during online education debates. I doubt that this is the only school district guilty of such things, I'm certainly not implying it happens in Wantagh but we'd be naive to think that this sort of thing doesn't happen to inflate passing and subsequently raise graduation rates.

www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/spin-cycle-1.812042/ny-audit-finds-hempstead-routinely-inflated-grades-to-passing-1.8072492

[Chris_Wendt]

We could discuss this for a long time from several perspectives.
I have been mulling this over, but independently of this article I have been taking an in-depth look at NYSED Report Cards for Wantagh, Seaford, Roosevelt, Hempstead, Wyandanch and Bay Shore, in light of the 2013 NYS Common Core-based Assessments.

• Consider that the entire then-seventh grade class (Class of 2018) in Roosevelt scored below grade level in Math; zero students, zero percent on-grade level, as they moved up into 8th grade.
• Looking at Class of 2013 (seniors) in Roosevelt, Hempstead, Wyandanch, and Wantagh, we can compare NYS student Performance Indices (PI) in English & Math. The PI are not scores but comparative results based upon a possible 200 points. These districts stacked-up against one another as follows in 2013:
  
  • ELA=142...Math=151...Wantagh
  • ELA= 52...Math= 55...Hempstead
  • ELA= 56...Math= 48...Roosevelt
  • ELA= 49...Math= 44...Wyandanch
• Both Roosevelt and Wyandanch reported no PI results from white students (2013 senior class); Wantagh reported no PI results from black students (2013 senior class).

Now consider how ill-prepared and under-educated many students are in Roosevelt, Wyandanch, and Hempstead by the time they reach their senior year in high school. Remember the other salient fact reported by Newsday that many kids have very poor attendance as well. This begs the question: what to do with (what to do about) these 18-year old youth with nearly passing grades who otherwise may be ineligible for a high school diploma?

Grade fixing or cheating cannot be the answer. Throwing hundreds of millions of state tax dollars at these districts to build new school buildings certainly has not worked, and, the State takeover of the Roosevelt district only seems to have made matters worse, there. So, what is the solution?

That is a question which, if unanswered, will have dire consequences here on Long Island in the future.
What are your thoughts?

Chris Wendt

[rr]

Chris your points are valid and questions are good ones.

If I had the answers and was able to implement the changes required I probably wouldn't just be posting it on this board.

There are many things contributing to these issues, it starts at home and continues into the classroom. The scary part is that the classroom is probably the easier fix even though its virtually impossible to implement real change at schools...