Sewanhaka Superintendent James Grossane said Tuesday that a drop in mastery scores on the state English language arts exam in the 2017-18 school year coincided with a county trend, and Sewanhaka’s scores were still among the highest that year.
“Yes, there was a dip with Sewanhaka. However, there was a dip countywide and there was a dip statewide,” Grossane said at a Board of Education meeting.
Grossane said the district “stayed where we always are” above the county and state averages.
“Everybody went down a little bit, but we were still above everybody else,” Grossane said.
Grossane said he was responding to a resident’s question at a September board meeting about the reason for the drop in mastery scores.
At the September meeting, Brian Messinger, coordinator of classroom instructional technology and student achievement, said that Sewanhaka Central High School District saw a rise in test scores during the 2018-19 school year.
When the resident asked why there was a drop in mastery on the ELA Regents exam in 2017-18 from the previous year, Grossane said that the board would research the reasons.
When asked about drops in test results, Messinger said, “One of the hardest things to do when you see scores increase and decrease, and a lot of these are incremental changes, it’s hard to attribute them to one thing. It’s hard to attribute it to one program.”
He continued, “It’s hard to come up with data that says exactly why students do better on an exam.”
