Rye Neck School District Common Core Results Show Improvement in Math, Decline in English

The second year of standardized testing under the Common Core curriculum shows mixed results for the Rye Neck Schools.

By Bob Zahm

The second year of standardized testing under the Common Core curriculum shows mixed results for the Rye Neck Schools. The District continues to outperform statewide averages in both English Language Arts (English) and Math. And, similarly to the statewide results, more Rye Neck students passed the 2014 Math exam than in 2013. This result is due to a higher percentage of students passing the exam, despite fewer students taking the test.

The 2014 English test results are less positive with the percentage of passing Rye Neck students declining by 2.4% versus 2013. Statewide, the percentage of students who passed the 2014 English test increasethe English exam increased in 2014, but decreased for the Math test. Given that all students are required to take both English and Math, it is unclear why a measurable difference (39 students or about 5%) exists in the number of Rye Neck students taking each test.

Comparing Rye Neck’s performance to the top Westchester County districts shows the local schools remaining in the bottom third despite moving from a 15th to 13th ranking. The bottom-third grouping remained relatively constant with the notable addition of Rye City (replacing Eastchester) in English and the appearance of Ardsley (replacing Bronxville) in Math.

To move up from the bottom third grouping in English in 2014 required a passing rate better than 60.5% as compared to last year’s 62.2%. The cutoff for entry to the top third group also fell despite the overall highest English passing rate rising from 70.3% in 2013 (Chappaqua) to 71.7% in 2014 (Bronxville).

Presence in the middle-third Math grouping in 2014 required a passing rate of better than 65.6% versus last year’s 62.8%, reflective of the state-wide improvement in Math scores. Rye Neck’s improvement of 4.3 points to 63.8% got it closer to the middle third. However, Rye Neck also lost ground with respect to the number 1 Math ranking which increased by 5.8 points from 2013.

This review of Rye Neck’s performance on the 2014 English and Math tests is based on the aggregated data available on the New York State Education department’s website.