Springs School District officials reported disappointing scores this week from standardized math and English tests given last spring to students in grades three through eight.
The tests have come under scrutiny as too stressful — with Long Island becoming a home base for a significant “test opt-out” movement over the last decade — and the State Education Department has modified the formats, including content and length, over the last few years. Despite the changes, only 50 percent of Springs students, on average, scored as “proficient” or above on a scale of 1 to 4, with 4 being the highest.
While opt-out data for Springs was not available by press time, Debra Winter, the district superintendent, said yesterday that a key factor isn’t just the number, but the fact that “it’s the students that can score 3 or 4 that their parents are having them opt out.”
Erik Kelt, the school principal, delivered the news during Tuesday’s school board meeting. In last year’s fifth-grade class, 29 percent of students were proficient in English and 32 percent were proficient in math, he reported.
Those students were in the third grade when the pandemic closed schools to in-person learning — creating a disruption to education that teachers and students are still coping with.
“We can improve,” Mr. Kelt said. “We can do better, and our teachers are aware. They are willing and ready, and I’m excited to have the group that we do.”
Last year’s third-grade classes scored at 38 percent proficient in English and 42 percent in math, while the fourth grade fared a little better at 55 percent proficient in English and 45 percent in math.
Leading the way in the math scores was last year’s eighth-grade class, which came in at 68 percent proficient. The seventh-grade class scored the best on the English tests, with 68 percent of students scoring proficient or above.
“Some are performing higher than others, and others are showing growth from year to year,” Mr. Kelt said. “
“One really wonderful thing,” he continued, was that 100 percent of the advanced students taking level-one algebra and science — both Regents-level courses equivalent to high-school material — passed their end-of-year exams.
Another bright spot, he told the school board members, was that Springs outperformed students across Suffolk County in some areas, including fourth-grade English, sixth-grade English and math, seventh-grade English and math, and eighth-grade English and math.
Along with the scores, the principal also delivered ideas for bringing the results up to par. His suggestions include increasing student “contact time” with teachers and tutors, and more widely incorporating strategies already used by literacy specialists and English-as-a-new-language teachers.
Mr. Kelt also wants the school to prioritize kindergarten-through-second grade instruction, “to solidify a foundation of learning,” and to introduce a BOCES tool called iReady, which provides extra help on homework and can be used during July and August to forestall what educators call “summer slide.” He also recommended an approach dubbed SWIRL, which stands for speaking, writing, reading and listening, to ensure that each subject is taught with rigorous “fidelity.”
Also on the horizon, Mr. Kelt said, should be curriculum work to bring Springs up to date with the State Education Department’s new “Next Generation” standards, in particular lining up reading instruction with science-based methods of teaching.
To go with all these support systems for students should be equivalent support and training for teachers, he said, including adding teaching assistants to all kindergarten and first-grade classrooms.
“Once we have this great curriculum, that has all the supports that our students need, we teach that with fidelity,” Mr. Kelt said. “One thing we are going to absolutely have to do is prioritize that K-2 instruction. If you look at studies and research, if students are at third grade and they’re not on reading level yet, it’s going to be almost impossible to catch them up. And so we need that foundation to make sure our kids are coming into these tests already on grade level and have that proficiency.”