In Nassau County, for example, 87.1 percent of fourth-graders met academic standards on state English Language Arts tests taken last January, compared to 78.4 percent of sixth-graders and 69.
8 percent of eighth-graders. In Suffolk, comparable figures were 78 percent, 71.6 percent and 61.
1 percent. State education officials declared at a morning news conference the latest results underline an essential point: that public middle schools need to do more to challenge students academically. Research studies have shown that scores in parochial and private schools don't take the same dip in the later grades as the public sector's.
"We need to tend to literacy in the middle grades," said State Education Commissioner Richard Mills, who called for intensified teacher training and more rigorous instruction in reading and writing. "It's not excusable to find reasons why a child can't read." Local school and teachers administrators usually dismiss such arguments, however.
Many speculate that middle-school students focus less on testing than younger ones, because they are preoccupied with the usual problems of adolescence. "They're going through puberty, they're going through peer pressure," said Mel Stern, a sixth-grade reading teacher and union leader at West Hollow Middle School in Melville. "By the time kids get to middle school, there are so many more things on their plate.
" Stern's school is located in the affluent Half Hollow Hills district. There, the state's academic standards were met by 90.1 percent of fourth-graders tested, 87.
2 percent of sixth-graders and 80.1 percent of eighth-graders. Today marks the first release of scores from testing in grades three through eight, which is required by the federal "No Child Left Behind Law".
In prior years, the state tested only grades four and eight. The expanded testing has reached about 210,000 students on Long Island -- triple the number assessed in the past. Do you think middle school students are smarter than you were at their age?
Yes, I think today's students are learning more in school than I did. Yes, but students are learning more on the internet than in school. No, I knew more at that age than they do now.
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