NOTHING TO WRITE HOME ABOUT

 In the past seven years the S-VE  school district has been  on the states “Schools In Need Of Improvement” list twice, where the worst schools in the state wind up. Of about 4000 schools in the state, about 170 of the worst schools outside of NYC share this shame with us.

     The state mandated eight grade English tests started in 1999. Our district has done poorly in this test, as in many others. We have had an average failure rate of 54% over ten years. Thus most students in the S-VE district have failed the state mandated eight grade English test. 

      In 2007 more than half of the students failed again. (52% failed)  NY state releases test results according to ethnicity and race of the students. Since S-VE has 98% of it's  students white, we must compare our test results  results with statistics on white student test results.  The state average for white students for the English 8 test is  69% passing. S-VE had only 48% passing. This means that S-VE has fallen 30% behind the state average in the tests given in 2007.  The state average jumped 7.7% in 2007. (Easier test?) Here in S-VE our students fell further behind with only a 4.9% increase.  What excuse will they dream up now?   We should be on top of the list in this test because our district does not have many families with Spanish or Ebonics as a home language.  Might be hard to join the few schools that have a 100% passing rate, but we certainly should be among the many schools that have a 90% passing rate.

   The school bureaucracy has, over the years made all kinds of excuses and spinns to explain their failure to provide even a reasonable education to our students. The school bureaucracy seems unconcerned about the fact that the futures of our students have been compromised. We have waited patiently for nine years. Time for change.