Regents Provide Tricky Test For Area Schools

The New York State Department of Education recently released their annual report containing the statistical appraisal of academic performance in schools across the city, where Queens schools’ results were a mixed bag.
Education officials say they are now able to track the performance of less stable students who either drop out during their first two years in high school or transfer during the last two years. Previously, these students were left out of the annual reports.
Out of the Queens public schools and high schools across the city, Townsend Harris again ranked number one with a 100 percent passing rate for the minimum requirements on the English, Math, Science and Global History Regents and 100 percent graduation rate. Also, 100 percent of the student body that graduated in 2004 received regents diplomas and went on to a college.
Thomas Cunningham, principal of Townsend Harris, attributes the consistency of the students’ scores to “the quality of the student body, our outstanding faculty and staff, and a supportive and actively involved Parent Teacher Association and Alumni Association.”
The school, founded on the Ephebic Oath, “to leave our city not less but greater and better than I found it,” consistently has the highest rate of graduation and Regents passing rates. Cunningham says their mission is “to develop a complete individual by providing the highest level of instruction with the expectation of excellence and the requirement to perform community service.”
Considering its enormous graduating class size, Cardozo High School still scored in the top five of the Queens public schools. August Martin High School in Jamaica had the poorest percentage of passing grades on average on all five of the minimum required Regents exams needed for a regents endorsed diploma followed closely by Far Rockaway High School.
The state department also released the 2003-04 test scores and school ranking statistics on city elementary and intermediary schools. The bottom ten elementary schools in Queens with the lowest scoring rate on both the English and Math state standard tests all have a poverty rate of above 60 percent. The highest poverty rate out of the top ten elementary schools in Queens scoring an average passing grade on both state exams was 45 percent.
In fact, 9 out of 10 schools in the top ten had a poverty rate below 30 percent. The highest percentage of students meeting or exceeding the English state test standards for 8th grade was 85 percent. In math the highest passing percentage was only 89 percent.
The data indicated a decrease in performance from last year, as 63.3 percent of New York City students expecting to graduate in 2004 met the minimum standards for a Regents-issued diploma while last year 75.9 percent of students expecting to graduate in 2003 met the minimum English requirements.
melissa@queenscourier.com