Leigh Shaw, Carle Place’s assistant superintendent of curriculum, instruction and innovation, presented the district’s 2024-25 student achievement report at its Board of Education meeting on Thursday, Dec. 11, highlighting the district’s academic growth at all grade levels.
The presentation was intended to communicate data transparently, inform about the district’s strategic decision-making and continue the culture of data-driven improvements, Shaw said.
Shaw said the statistics that she used included data from 1,338 students throughout the district.
She first showed the students’ growth from the 2023-24 school year to the 2024-25 school year through state testing in Math and English. She used three tiers to highlight the growth of students in kindergarten through eighth grade, with the top tier representing students at or above grade level and the third tier representing students well below grade level.
In 2023-24, the first tier included 67% of students for Reading and 68% of students for Math, which jumped to 71% and 74% for Reading and Math, respectively, one year later. At the same time, the third tier shrunk from 14% to 10% for Reading and 7% to 5% for Math over that same time frame.
Shaw also highlighted improvements in learning for students in special education who don’t use English as their first language.
She said the district had about 25% of its students opt out of the state ELA exam and 30% of students opt out of the state Math testing this past school year. She said that means the district’s data from state ELA testing does not represent all students in Carle Place.
The state exams are taken by students in grades three through eight, and are graded on performance levels, with 1 being the lowest level and 4 being the highest level.
Test-takers in all grades, except third grade for Math and fourth grade for English, achieved a higher percentage of 3s and 4s than the regional average, Shaw said.
“Based on the 75% of students who sat for the exam, you can see we were extremely successful,” she said when talking about the English section.
When discussing the high school’s statistics, Shaw said students had a higher percentage of passing humanities Regents exams, scoring a 65% or better, and a higher percentage of earning mastery on those tests by scoring an 85% or better than the regional averages.
Carle Place students also passed all math and science Regents exams, except for physics, at a higher percentage than the regional average.
In terms of Advanced Placement exams, the district saw a slight decrease in students enrolled in those classes, but a slight increase in AP exams taken. During the 2024-25 school year, compared to the year prior.
A total of 84.7% of students scored at least a 3 or better, while 16.9% of students scored a 5 on AP exams, each stat marking a four-year best for the district, Shaw said.
In addition, 56% of the most recent graduating class earned AP Scholar status or higher, she said.
Shaw noted that student participation in dual-enrollment courses, classes that provide students with the opportunity to earn college credit, has decreased over the past few years, saying that this is because the high school’s virtual enterprise class, a course dedicated to business simulations of companies to better learn about a wide range of business topics, has increased in popularity.
“We are working as a K-12 system to provide the very best experience and opportunities for our students,” Shaw said in concluding the presentation.
Earlier this month, Carle Place’s Cherry Lane School was named an i-Ready Super Stretch School for its growth, an achievement that just 200 schools nationwide receive.
Being named a Super Stretch School means that over 55% of students met or exceeded their Stretch Growth goals, and Cherry Lane’s students surpassed this benchmark with 59% achieving their targets, according to the district.
“That is a result of an enormous amount of hard work by the kids, by their very, very dedicated and supportive teachers, and an administrative team that puts learning and education first,” Superintendent Ted Cannone said at the meeting about the district’s positive results.
