In yesterday's NY Times, on page A23 (and presently available on nytimes.com), there was a very helpful article which provided greater perspective for the data which Newsday published yesterday, and which I highlighted in yesterday's commentary titled "SED Survey Shows Elwood Did Very Well With Class of 2010".
The Times pointed out why one particular category, in which Elwood happened to have the Second Best results among all eight school districts in the Town of Huntington -- just two percentage points behind leader Cold Spring Harbor -- is so important from a college preparedness perspective.
Sharon Otterman of The Times wrote:
"For many years, officials at the City University of New York and at community colleges across the state have raised questions about why so many students from public high schools seem to lack basic skills when they arrive on campuses, requiring extensive remediation. But Tuesday was the first time the state attempted to say how many seniors at each school were prepared to move on.
“This is talking about useful truths,” said Merryl H. Tisch, the chancellor of the Board of Regents. “We are all aware that this is very challenging, and that the tenacity of the achievement gap is undeniable. But the only way to correct the problem is to find something that allows you to state clearly where you are, and that’s what this is.”
The college-ready statistics, which the state formally called “aspirational performance measures,” were released alongside general graduation rates, which have been on the rise for about a decade and continued to inch up last year in the city and state."
Ms. Otterman went on to say:
"The formula for college readiness comes from an analysis of data from city community colleges, which found that scoring a 75 on the English Regents exam and an 80 on the math Regents roughly predicted that students would get at least a C in college-level courses in the same subjects. Scores below that meant students often had to take remedial classes before they could do college-level work."
Therefore, with Elwood's 2010 graduating students at Glenn scoring 80 percent on that indicator, they were better prepared than ONLY Cold Spring Harbor (82), among all districts in Suffolk County, and when you add in the Nassau County districts, Elwood was exceeded only by Jericho (87), Garden City (83), Cold Spring Harbor (82), Plainview-Old Bethpage (82), and they were equaled only by Manhasset (80).
Now, take a look at those very few districts, in all of Nassau and Suffolk, carefully.
Every one of them has a long-standing reputation of excellence.
Several of them represent districts of great average family wealth and little in the way of individual family need.
But, there we are; little Elwood, getting the most bang for our economic bucks, and trying to do better and better.
What greater case could be made for demonstrating our focus upon the goals of Kaizen, or Continuous Improvement?
Does that mean that we have achieved educational Nirvana? Hardly; we have other improvements to make, and you can never, never, rest on your laurels, because we have entered a global marketplace, and the students of so many countries continue to do better than the students of the USA.
But, this is part of a process, and we have to rejoice in such great improvements, even while acknowledging that we have further to go. And, as a measure of comparison with our peers in New York, we are certainly improving, and we are certainly doing extremely well among all ninety-eight districts, with high schools, in Nassau and Suffolk counties.
Once again, Wow!
