NEW SCOTLAND — Voorheesville’s director of curriculum Karen Conroy interpreted for the school board this month the latest school report card data, and combined information from previous state testing standards and relatively new Common Core exams to show how students have responded to the changed curricula.

“For the past few years, our teachers have been working hard using data to help inform instruction, as well as spending time with Common Core standards and materials,” Conroy told The Enterprise in an email. “I think all of that work, as well as a strong elementary foundation in math, has paid off.”  

Conroy told the board that, according to 2013-14 data, Voorheesville third-grade math students scored well, performing better than students did the previous few years, and significantly better than suburban comparison schools like Guilderland, Bethlehem, Niskayuna, and North Colonie.

“We look at our strongest neighbors,” Conroy said.

At the high school level, Common Core curriculum and testing is affecting how many students are deemed to have achieved mastery.

School board President Timothy Blow noted that only 6 percent of students showed mastery in Common Core algebra with a score of 85 percent or higher. He said that 20 percent of students in Voorheesville receive high honors from the school, but that the number of honors students does not match the number of students who mastered the material, according to the test data.

“What can we do better?” Blow asked.

Conroy said that students last year took both the integrated algebra and the Common Core algebra exams. About 29 percent of Voorheesville students scored 85 or higher on the integrated algebra exam, compared to the 6 percent Blow referred to on the Common Core exam.

“We really have to think about what that means,” Conroy said.

Superintendent Teresa Thayer Snyder said that the testing introduced a fifth level, whereas students used to be graded on a scale of 1 to 4, with the fourth level representing mastery.

“The idea is that a small number will attain a 5,” Snyder said. “They’re upping the ante. If they’re going to have a fifth level, the fifth level should be very elite. It’s very difficult to achieve.”

Conroy said that students this school year took only the Common Core algebra test.

“One thing that I am particularly proud of is shown through the trend line [on a chart] for middle school math, in particular, in grades 7 and 8,” Conroy wrote of her presentation in an email.  “When you look at the line, you can see that we were below the [suburban school] cohort for many years.

Conroy told the board that Voorheesville’s students scored better than the cohort schools in math, but that the district’s fourth-graders did well on multiple choice English questions, but not well on short answer essays.

Voorheesville’s teachers looked at the exam results and “decided to create” a new approach to the Common Core material, Conroy said.

“The students would have a model — a scaffold — with which to practice,” she said.

“Hopefully, we will see strong results this year as well,” Conroy wrote in an email, “although, we may have to take caution using next year's results since there were so many test refusals in the district and across the state this year.”

In Voorheesville, the parents of nearly 18 percent of students in grades 3 through 8 opted to keep their children from taking the math and English language arts Common Core tests. 

The district’s demographics are also recorded for school report card data; while still predominantly white, the percentage of Caucasian students in Voorheesville dropped from 96 percent in 2009-10 to 91 percent in 2013-14. According to the report, 3 percent of Voorheesville students last year were Asian, 2 percent were Hispanic, 2 percent were multi-racial, and 1 percent were Black. The district served 1,178 students.

Student plea

— Sixth-grader Gabrielle Dowd asked the board to stop using Styrofoam trays in the school cafeteria. She wrote her presentation for the board as part of an English class persuasive writing assignment.

Dowd said that sugar cane-based trays are safer and can be composted. The alternate trays cost 15 cents each, but the cost can be reduced to 4 cents if purchased in bulk with other schools, she said.

“I know the school’s broke,” she said, urging the board to consider student safety.

Styrofoam trays can cause cancer and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Dowd reported.

“What is less safe than getting cancer?” she asked.

More students with ADHD will be more expensive than trays because of the need to hire special-education teachers, Dowd said.

“I think this is something that our district should be looking at,” said retiring business official Sarita Winchell. “Thank you for bringing it to our attention.”

Dowd’s sassy sister, Sadie, a fourth-grader, also spoke to the board, but without an assignment; “I just wanted to speak,” she told The Enterprise.

“I don’t want cancer,” she said. She said that her grandparents died of cancer.

“It’s not fun to lose someone you love,” Dowd said.

“It’s illegal for restaurants to use Styrofoam,” she said, referring to an Albany County ban on the material.

“I love the food in my school. I’d love it even more if it were on compostable trays,” Dowd said;

Other business

In other business, the board:

— Heard from high school Principal Patrick Corrigan that the physics balloon experiment went awry.

“We have not recovered the balloon,” Corrigan said. He visited the physics class last week after the students launched a weather-recording balloon.

“There’s a sense of mourning,” he said of the students. “This was a success long before the balloon was ever launched”; and

— Learned that Erik Patak will be the valedictorian, and that Ben Mackay will be the salutatorian for the class of 2015.