Just as most of their students traditionally have gotten over the years, the Jericho Union Free School District and the Syosset Central School District have received excellent report cards that indicate distinct academic accomplishment for the 1997-98 academic year.

The New York State Education Department recently released its third annual set of district Report Cards, part of a massive project initiated by the State Board of Regents which, under the tenure of Education Commissioner Richard Mills, has been significantly bolstering the criteria necessary for a student to graduate with a Regents diploma.

While these new standards have sent certain districts panicking to overhaul their teaching methods and curricula, Syosset and Jericho have apparently adjusted to the changes so far.

According to the report card results, in the 1997-98 school year, 153 of 192 total Jericho graduates obtained a Regents diploma, and 312 of 427 Syosset graduates did the same.

Furthermore, of the 1996-97 school year graduates, 98 percent from Jericho and 100 percent from Syosset are now attending either a four- or two-year college. (Unlike all other statistics listed in the annual report cards, this one lags an extra year behind. The 1997-98 statistics on college admission won't be available until next year.)

The two local school districts placed well above the state average in every category, from basic elementary school reading and writing skills to high school Regents examinations.

Before one can peruse the results of either school district, however, one must understand the method by which the Board of Regents calculates results, and the philosophy behind it. Critics of the report cards have complained since their inception that the results are skewed and deceiving, and usually make districts appear worse off than they are.

The factor that engenders the most public confusion, yet bears a major impact on how report card results are tallied, is what is called the AGE or Average Grade Enrollment. This is the population mean of the freshman, sophomore, junior and senior classes. As a math equation, it would be: (freshmen + sophomores + juniors + seniors) divided by four.

The Board of Regents has made it very clear that it now expects every student, including those with learning disabilities, to take more Regents exams and graduate with a Regents diploma. Because of this ambitious stance, the state considers any student who is eligible to take a particular Regents exam, but for whatever reason does not take one, as a student with a non-passing Regents score. In other words, students who choose not to take the exam are factored into the test results, dropping the district's percentage of those passing.

Worse, however, is that in many cases, the Regents Board is in essence punishing school systems for the non-passing of imaginary students, who obviously cannot take the test because they do not exist. This happens because the AGE figure is an approximation, based on mean average, of how many students are enrolled in a particular grade, and so many times that figure is higher than the actual number of students who are eligible to take the Regents.

Jericho's AGE enrollment, for example, was 175 students per grade in 1997-98. But there actually were only 169 sophomores that year. That means that for every Regents taken by sophomores that year, there were, according to the report card's AGE-based statistics, six imaginary students who did not pass the test.

Conversely, figures based on the AGE system can make districts look outrageously successful. Is it possible to have more than 100 percent of your test-takers pass? It was in Jericho, where 127 percent of the students taking the Regents English exam scored better than a 65 out of 100 in 1998, according to the AGE system.

Amazingly, every 11th-grade student took the exam and passed - a remarkable achievement and a highlight of Jericho's results. But the reason this added up to 127 percent instead of 100 percent, was because in this case the Average Grade Enrollment underestimated the amount of actual test-takers there would be by 53 students. In essence, the state assumed there were 175 test-takers when there were actually 228.

In fairness, the reports do list the actual number of students taking the Regents and, of those, how many almost passed by scoring at least a 55, how many passed by at least receiving a 65, and how many passed with distinction at a score of 85 or higher.

These figures, however, are not as prominently displayed, and are not used when comparing similar districts with each other.

Even if some of the numbers are misleading, it is still easy to interpret that Jericho and Syosset students passed all of their Regents exams in very high percentages, and that the amount of students who passed with distinction far exceeded the New York State average. Compared with similar districts, most of the time Syosset and Jericho came out ahead.

The following are the passing percentages of Jericho students for the 1997-98 Regents exams, according to the AGE system: English, 127 percent; Language, 83 percent; Math I, 101 percent; Math III, 63 percent; Biology, 85 percent; Chemistry, 57 percent; Global Studies, 83 percent; U.S. History & Government, 75 percent.

Percentages rise significantly when factoring in only the students who actually did take the test. Of the actual Jericho test-takers, at least 90 percent passed all of the exams listed above, except for Math III, at 88 percent, and Chemistry, at 87 percent.

Jericho's Regents Chemistry scores consist of the district's most visible blemish. In 1996-97, 84 percent passed the test according to the AGE system, as opposed to 57 percent. And in 1995-96, the percentage of actual test-takers that passed the Regents was much higher at 94 percent than it was last year at 87 percent.

The following are the passing percentages of Syosset students for the 1997-98 Regents exams, according to the AGE system: English, 94 percent; Language, 86 percent Math I, 92 percent; Math III, 72 percent; Biology, 83 percent; Chemistry, 80 percent; Global Studies, 82 percent; U.S. History & Government, 85 percent.

Percentages rise significantly when factoring in only the students who actually did take the test. Of the actual Syosset test-takers, at least 90 percent passed all of the exams listed above, except for Biology, at 89 percent; Global Studies, at 88 percent; and U.S. History & Government, at 84 percent.

Syosset Regents Global Studies and U.S. History scores consist of the district's most visible blemishes. For Global Studies, over the past three years, the AGE passing percentage has dropped from 91 percent to 86 percent to 82 percent, and the actual passing percentage has dropped from 96 percent to 90 percent to 88 percent.

For History, over the past three years, the AGE passing percentage has actually risen by four percentage points, but the actual passing percentage has dropped from 96 percent to 88 percent to 84 percent.

As high school graduation standards become much more difficult, the educational process continues to become far more advanced in the elementary school stages; therefore, the school report cards go far beyond tracking the academic successes of shortcomings of high school programs. They measure districts from Grades K - 12.

According to the report cards, Jericho and Syosset third-, fifth- and sixth-graders are among the top in the state in reading, writing and math skills, with almost every child able to perform on at least a "typical" level.

Some school districts have reported incorrect numbers in their report cards; therefore, the figures above should not be considered absolute.