Letter to the Editor: Rockland County School District Comparison

To the Editor:

Several entities and organizations regularly publish rankings of school districts involving individual district achievements. The rankings include: Best School Districts, Best Teachers, Best High Schools, Safest School Districts, etc.

These rankings occasionally cause confusion among parents, students and property taxpayers with regard to how their respective school districts are actually performing. The most recent school district ranking published by niche.com involves the Safest School Districts. The Niche criteria for this category includes absentee rates, suspensions, arrests, law enforcement referrals and survey results.

I am not sure how arrest information and law enforcement referrals could be readily accessible to Niche. After speaking to parents and reading numerous comments on social media regarding this latest “Best of” ranking, I thought it would be helpful to prepare a factual data comparison of all eight Rockland County school districts for the 2016-17 school year.

This comparison contains the most recent data from the New York State Education Department website: data.nysed.gov. Included are NYS Assessment and Regents exam proficiency rates for the elementary, middle school and high school grades.

Kudos to our dedicated teachers and staff in all of our Rockland County school districts.

Tom DePrisco
Pearl River

  districts, education, high schools, ranking, Rockland County School District, teachers