Editorial: Corruption hurts kids in worst-performing schools
Passage rates on state tests plunged by more than half in math and nearly as much in English, after the state Education Department moved to more rigorous national academic standards known as the Common Core. Credit: iStock
The nosedive of New York's standardized test scores is a much-needed reality check as grade-school students transition to a curriculum that will better prepare them for college and beyond. In Long Island's lowest-performing districts, however, the truth really hurts.
In Syosset, one of the Island's better-performing districts, seeing the percentage of eighth-graders who meet math standards drop from 91 to 63 feels like a return to the front end of a learning curve. Parents, students and teachers will simply need time to adapt to the higher standards.
But the plunge doesn't seem nearly so constructive in Hempstead, where eighth-graders' math proficiency dropped from 32 percent to 5.6 percent. And it gets worse. Only 2.2 percent of Wyandanch fourth-graders met standards in English. In Roosevelt, where state intervention has only exacerbated the district's myriad problems, just one out of 211 seventh-graders scored proficient in math.
These districts' schools aren't places of learning. They better resemble waiting rooms for children until they're underemployed, jobless or worse.
Poverty can't mask how these districts failed their students, districts where thousands of dollars more than the state average are spent per pupil. Compare Westbury and Hempstead, where about 84 percent of students in each district qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. In Westbury, 20 percent of eighth-graders were proficient in English. In Hempstead, it was just 5.3 percent. Likewise, seventh-graders in Bay Shore and Freeport dramatically outperformed their Roosevelt counterparts in math, despite near-identical levels of subsidized meals.
Corrupt and dysfunctional school governments have long been festering wounds atop the miserable achievement in these districts. And the more rigorous Common Core curriculum won't make any difference until good governance is in place. Amid elected officials' absurd political battles, personal ambitions, culture of patronage and negligent administrations, the children are forgotten.
