Beach Street Middle School, West Islip NY

Original Research by School Decision on Beach Street Middle School

Beach Street Middle School serves grades six through eight in West Islip, a predominantly residential South Shore hamlet in Suffolk County. The school has an enrollment of about four hundred students, with the substantial majority white, a small share Hispanic, and very few students from other backgrounds. About one in ten students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting a community of moderate to solid means.

The school's recent state assessment results show mixed performance. In mathematics, sixth-grade proficiency is in the low-to-mid range, while seventh grade performs somewhat better at just above sixty percent. English Language Arts proficiency in sixth grade sits substantially lower, around thirty-six percent, though seventh grade recovers to about fifty percent. Eighth-grade ELA proficiency also reaches fifty percent. Science testing data were not available, and eighth-grade math results were suppressed due to very small test participation. The school's overall proficiency index across tested subjects and grades places it in the bottom quartile among districts in Suffolk County, a positioning that reflects genuine academic challenge and may warrant a closer look at the school's instructional strategies and support structures.

Participation rates tell a separate story. Testing participation in the 2024-25 school year was notably uneven: sixth-grade math participation was about fifty-six percent and ELA fifty-two percent, while seventh grade saw forty-four percent participation in math and thirty-seven percent in ELA, and eighth grade fell to roughly twenty-five percent. Parents may want to discuss directly with the school what accounts for these gaps, whether they reflect absences on test days, opt-outs, or other factors, and what that means for the reliability of these results as a snapshot of school performance.

West Islip Union Free School District itself maintains fiscal predictability and stability. The district has held to the state's property tax levy cap for over a decade and funds capital projects through a voter-backed reserve rather than issuing bonds, keeping tax increases modest. The district recently restructured its full-day Pre-Kindergarten program, moving it to an outside provider beginning in 2025-26 with enrollment capped to grant funding and admission by lottery—a material change for families with young children.

The hamlet itself is built-out suburban character: car-dependent, organized around Montauk Highway and residential streets, with no walkable downtown. The largest employer is Good Samaritan University Hospital, which anchors a medical office district. The Babylon Branch LIRR station sits just over a mile away, reachable by transit. Housing values are solid and stable, with a median home value in the mid-seven-hundred-thousands and median rent around twenty-five hundred dollars per month. The market for single-family homes is active, though the community draws little new multifamily development; most new construction is scattered single-family infill rather than large projects.

Beach Street Middle School is one of two middle schools in the district. It sits on a suburban campus setting within the residential street grid, part of the district's distributed school model rather than a walkable downtown cluster. The school serves the local middle grades population without selective admissions or specialized programming visible in the available data. A parent considering this school should understand it as a comprehensive neighborhood middle school in an established suburb, currently showing academic results below the county median and worth exploring in detail regarding support services, teaching approaches, and how the school is working to improve proficiency, particularly in ELA and among students who are present for testing.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

New York Regents Exams

1 course reported · 2024-25

End-of-course exams required for a New York Regents diploma. Each row shows the cohort size and the share of students scoring at the proficient level or higher.

Course	Students tested	% proficient
Science	125	84.0%

Math

Grade 50%

School 0% · District 39% · ▼ 39 pts below district

▼ 51 pts below state median · ▼ 49 pts below county median

Grade 653%

School 53% · District 45% · ▲ 8 pts above district

▲ 8 pts above state median · ▲ 7 pts above county median

Grade 761%

School 61% · District 56% · ▲ 5 pts above district

▲ 8 pts above state median · even with county median

English language arts

Grade 50%

School 0% · District 45% · ▼ 44 pts below district

▼ 54 pts below state median · ▼ 47 pts below county median

Grade 636%

School 36% · District 31% · ▲ 5 pts above district

▼ 10 pts below state median · ▼ 9 pts below county median

Grade 751%

School 51% · District 44% · ▲ 7 pts above district

▲ 4 pts above state median · ▲ 6 pts above county median

Grade 850%

School 50% · District 50% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▲ 2 pts above state median · ▲ 6 pts above county median

Science

Grade 50%

School 0% · District 45% · ▼ 45 pts below district

▼ 42 pts below state median · ▼ 40 pts below county median

Grade 80%

School 0% · District 0%

▼ 33 pts below state median · ▼ 27 pts below county median

Social studies

Grade 897%

School 97% · district not reported

▲ 19 pts above state median · ▲ 6 pts above county median

This schoolWEST ISLIP UNION FREE SCHOOL DISTRICT, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 6Lower-income29%Higher-income37%8 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income43%Higher-income53%10 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 6Lower-income20%Higher-income58%38 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income43%Higher-income63%20 pp gap