The Buffalo public school district was ranked last in western New York based on academic performance. Business First ranked 97 public school districts in the eight counties of western New York based on four years of New York State test data.
The top four highest performing districts include Williamsville, East Aurora, Clarence and Iroquois. Projects Editor Scott Thomas says the top 14 districts earned more than 90 points of Business First 100-point scale qualifying for its “Honor Roll.”
“What we’re doing is looking at ten Regents exams and ten elementary and middle school tests from each year. So, that’s twenty tests taken by the students in each school district in each year. We then look at those tests twice. So, we’re looking at the percentage that passed the test of course, but we’re also looking at the percentage who get what we define as superior scores, which would be 85 percent or better on a Regents test or what is known as a level 4 score on a test between third and eighth grade. Then we’re looking at graduation rates both the percentage of graduates who received Regents diplomas of any kind. Then the percentage who get the Regents diploma with advanced designations, which requires to pass eight regents tests. So, we look at that for four years as well,” said Thomas.
Thomas says Buffalo’s ranking was no surprise. He says Business First has been doing the rankings for 23 years and the Buffalo public school district has been in last place for 22 years.
“It’s not a particular surprise, because when we do rankings for the Rochester area, Rochester is last. When we do upstate rankings we also find Albany and Syracuse do fairly poorly. Major cities school districts obviously have problems socioeconomically, which does have an impact, which we acknowledge. They also have other difficulties, which just tends to overall lead them to be toward the bottom of the list,” said Thomas.
Thomas says Williamsville has been the number one district based on academic performance for 11 straight years, but he says the gap between the top districts has narrowed this year.