Thursday, May 14, 2009

School District 15 and its "Skyrocketing" Test Scores

I know that this is already old news, but the students of School District 15 deserve a congratulations on the dramatic improvement on their ELA test results:

The results, for third- through eighth-graders, showed an improvement of nearly 10 percentage points over last year's scores.


"Those results are unbelievable, unbelievable," said Lawrence school board Trustee Uri Kaufman. "Even a 3 percent jump is considered at big deal. A 10 percent jump is a miracle."


Last year, 73 percent of the district's students met or exceeded New York state learning standards, while this year nearly 83 percent reached that level. Last year, meeting the state standards required a score of 68 percent or better on the exam, while this year it required a score of 77 percent or more.


The district's greatest gains were in the middle school, where 85 percent of its 674 students in grades six through eight met or exceeded the state standards. There was also progress at the elementary schools, where the number of third-graders who met the standards jumped by eight percentage points over last year, and the number of fourth-graders who did so increased by four percentage points.


"I am absolutely delighted with the tremendous progress that our district has made," said Dr. Vicki Karant, Lawrence’s assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.

Of course, it is hard to miss the relevance of these sterling results to the upcoming school board elections. However impressive the Kaufman/Feldhamer ticket's triple endorsement reported here is, actual, real world results by the current board speak even louder than the words of newspaper editors in support of the Kaufman/Feldhamer.

Kudos to the students, teachers administrators and board members of School District 15 on a job well done.

24 comments:

  1. No reason to highlight these improvementw. We all know the board has people in Albany who manipulate these numbers. It's all part of the broader conspiracy.

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  2. why does this blog get a warning? savesd15 seems far more propaganda filled than this.

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  3. "Kudos to the students, administrators and board members of School District 15 on a job well done."

    Would it actually kill you to acknowledge the hard working, professional teachers that helped make these scores a reality? Uri Kaufman in the Herald refers to the scores as a miracle. I don't think so. It's called dedicated professionalism. Yes, teacher salaries make up the largest chunk of the budget and are responsible for high taxes. The problem, however, is not the teachers but our tax structure. Your obvious omission of them in your kudos says a lot about your bias and prejudice toward them.

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  4. Great job to the children and the teachers. Not the BOE.

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  5. Great job to the LTA!!! Those teachers are worth every penny they get. And without the LTA, we would never have been able to retain all of our teachers.

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  6. Hey, sd15openclassroom, why don't you respond to anon 4:26 above? (and to 4:26 AM, get some sleep! hopefully it's not district 15 politics that has you up blogging at that ungodly hour!)

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  7. How can it be the teachers? We've had mostly the same teachers left over from the past board. The only thing that has changed recently is the board.

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  8. The stupidity (sorry if that word sounds overly negative, but it fits perfectly) of the above comment doesn't deserve a serious reply. Instead, I offer the following rebuttal:

    The previous board mishandled the district's money, leading to the election of the current board, under whose guidance the improved scores were attained. Without the actions of the previous board, these scores never would have happened. Therefore, the real credit belongs to Pam Greenbaum, Stanley Kopilow, and most importantly, Dr. Sussman.

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  9. So, let me understand, because the previous BOE is alleged to have "mishandled the district's money", and because "Pam Greenbaum, Stanley Kopilow, and most importantly, Dr. Sussman" were on the "previous BOE", and now the new BOE is alleged to better handle the $, so therefore the scores improved??

    Or, Maybe, even with the same teachers, there was extra effort put in to prove that these teachers are really great, and deserve the $, and should be the heros of the district. Not the parents, the administrators or BOE members past or present.

    And a lot of credit to the kids for working hard.

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  10. So, I'm guessing since the BOE is claiming this as their own personal victory, they actually rolled up their sleeves and personally tutored the children, or at least got the children extra help. And the teachers and students had nothing to do with the scores. Is this right? Frankly, it's appalling that the BOE would claim any credit for the test scores. They should simply state job well done. Since they don't, I will.

    Nice job kids! Nice job teachers!

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  11. "Kudos to the students, administrators and board members of School District 15 on a job well done."

    This is an obvious and intentional slight of the teachers, which lays bare the Orthodox managerial philosophy. Teachers make up the largest chunk of the budget. The Orthodox community doesn't want to pay taxes toward a system that they receive little benefit from. Therefore, they took control of the board to ensure that their benefits are maximized while their taxes kept as low as legally possible. The omission of the teachers in this post shows how many within the Ortho community (including the current board) have contempt for teachers because of the tax dollars that line their pockets. However, should this anger over finances effect one's ability to notice and recognize a job well done? Can it be possible that the teachers are not deserving any credit for the large increase in test scores? I doubt that any sane person could say so.

    To make a comparison, let's say that sd15openclassroom also has contempt for high police salaries in Nassau County. Let's also say that the county ends the year with a record decrease in violent crime in known hot spots. Sd15openclassroom's post would look something like this: "Kudos to the community members, the police commissioner and Tom Suozzi on a job well done."

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  12. "The omission of the teachers in this post shows how many within the Ortho community (including the current board) have contempt for teachers because of the tax dollars that line their pockets." Um, how many within the Ortho community did it take to write the post on this blog? Typical narrow mindedness - Blame the entire Orthodox community a post written by one person, who may not even be Orthodox.

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  13. "...who may not even be Orthodox"
    are you saying that the sd15openclassroom, who is running this blog along with Orthomom, may not be Orthodox? Give me a break.

    "Blame the entire Orthodox community (for) a post written by one person..."
    no, not the entire community. just a lot of it.

    "Typical narrow mindedness..."
    actually, I think it's an honest, open minded assessment of reality.

    If the above criticisms of sd15openclassroom are so off base, why hasn't he or she attempted to refute them? A reasonable explanation would be that the criticisms are accurate and that they are irrefutable. Another would be that this blog, serving as a proxy for the board, follows the board policy of not responding to the public.

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  14. Ahhh, so the board and the entire orthodox community are behind this blog. Now I understand.

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  15. Typical response; pick out one small section of a post to reply to and ignore the rest. BTW, that was meant as sarcasm, you know, comparing the blog owners and boards habit of not responding to questions?

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  16. Happy now?

    In all fairness, the previous poster should now praise the entire Orthodox community for it's fairmindedness and responsiveness to criticism. But I'm not holding my breath.

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  17. "Happy now?"

    Well, no. You did, literally, respond to criticism by clicking "post comment". However, you didn't actually respond to anything I said. A little dialogue, perhaps, and I'd be happy to give my thanks, if not my praise.

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  18. disregard previous post. didn't notice you changed original post. my only complaint now is relatively minor. why the sarcastic boldface? It lacks sincerity.

    Anyway, I'm just curious. Why were the teachers omitted to begin with? Was it a simple mistake? If it's because you have an issue with a particular teacher or two you really shouldn't take it out against an entire community of teachers.

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  19. Maybe the higher test scores aren't due to any of the above and are due to smarter kids. The kids in prior years were just stupid.

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  20. I don't know much about this stuff, but aren't there fewer kids from other districts being bused in now? If so, that might explain the "improvement."

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  21. No posts recently. I guess there hasn't been much happening in this humdrum SD15 community since May 14. (the date of the last post) Very quiet around here.

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  22. what, exactly, is the purpose of this blog?

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  23. its all crap. This is not acceptable at all. take a look at the scores of the students in this district in the 1970's, 1980's, 1990's and even before then and you will see that this district is currently doing its worst performance. People are flying out of here like crazy becuase of the minority controlled school board, and thats just what they want, for all majority homeowners to raise the white flag and leave...dont you think the community see's this???

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