State Test Scores Encouraging but Mixed

By Ann K. Williams
Staff Writer

August 22 -- State test scores unveiled by the School District last week reveal an encouraging, if mixed, snapshot of student progress this year, according to an analysis by The Lookout.

But while most scores went up, inequalities persist in a public education system some have called “two-tier.”

“I am exceedingly pleased with the work of our students and, of course, of our teachers and our principals,” School Superintendent Dr. John Deasy told the School Board last Thursday. “We have seen substantial and dramatic improvement in many cases.”

The Power Point bar graphs handed out at the meeting showed the percentage of students who had reached the “proficient” level in the California Standards Tests (CST). Each chart’s scores were broken down by grade

Students in grades two through 11 showed gains in English Language Arts (ELA) skills since last year’s test in all grades except six and 10.

Students in grades two through seven showed gains in Mathematics in grades two through five and held their ground in grades six and seven.

Deasy and Chief Academic Officer Dr. Donna Muncey were particularly pleased by the gain in ninth grade ELA scores, which have gone up by 14 percentage points in just one year.

The freshman classes “have been doing a lot of things differently,” Deasy said, promising that his staff would be looking closely at the high schools to see “what is the cause for the massive growth in ninth grade.”

In all the tests, Santa Monica-Malibu scores were higher than the County’s as a whole.

But when the data were broken down into ethnicities, an “achievement gap” became clear. These graphs were based on the Standardized Testing and Reporting System (STAR) data which include CST scores.

White students’ scores ranged from 64 percent to 82 percent in ELA skills.

Their African-American peers’ scores ranged from 18 percent to 62 percent, while Latino students’ scores ranged from 20 percent to 52 percent.

And the gains per grade over last year’s scores were also disproportionate.

Again, broken down by grade level, white students’ scores went up by 13 to 25 percentage points.

African American students lost ground in the third grade, and made gains ranging from three to 15 points in the other grades.

Latino students made gains in six of the 10 grades tested, ranging from one point to 17 points.

The CST graph of “economically disadvantaged” students’ ELA scores showed larger gains. While proficiency scores still ranged from 20 percent to 50 percent, some of the gains over last year’s scores were more than 20 percentage points.

“We are exceptionally pleased,” said Deasy of this graph. “Students are growing to proficiency faster. That’s how you close the achievement gap.”

But the STAR graphs revealed an increasing achievement gap, as white students’ scores made greater gains than those of minority students.

The gap showed up in the math scores as well.

White students’ scores ranged from 68 to 85 percent, while African American students scored from 22 to 57 percent and Latino students scored from 28 to 57 percent, and white students’ gains over last year’s scores were typically about five percentage points higher than those of minority students.

Earlier in the evening, Santa Monica High School parent Orlando Rojas alluded in passing to the problem of minority student achievement.

“We’ve been promised that our students have been progressing,” Rojas said. “We believe that this is false.”

Rae Jeane Williams, UCLA Graduate School of Education Faculty Advisor, who specializes in teaching literacy in urban schools, speculated on the achievement gap.

“If you have to live on hourly wages, you sometimes have to work two jobs,” Williams told The Lookout. The parents of economically disadvantaged students “can’t take a day off work.

“They don’t have time or resources (of middle class parents), so the disparity just gets larger and larger,” Williams said. “People who are disenfranchised aren’t going to press the schools.”

Students who have fallen behind may be given less enriched curricular fare, even in the same schools as their middle class peers. “Oh well, they need drill,” teachers might conclude, she said.

“Are they really getting the same classes?” Williams asked, referring to high school advanced placement and honors classes.

English language learners face their own set of problems. “Academic English takes five, six, seven years to learn,” Williams said, noting that these students are often “plunked down” in a class where “they think they’ll just understand with time.”

But whatever the causes for inequity in Santa Monica, Deasy remained optimistic.

“While we still have a long way to go to close these pernicious gaps, I am encouraged by the magnitude of the gains our economically disadvantaged students are making,” he said in a prepared statement faxed by the District before the meeting.

The CST data -- only one of the tools the District uses to measure its progress -- are used to measure student proficiency as required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

CST scores fall into five numerically defined groups: far below basic, below basic, basic, proficient and advanced. The federal law mandates that 100 percent of all students score at the proficient or advanced levels by 2014.

Each school’s CST scores are expected to increase by a set amount each year, called the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) target.

Schools that repeatedly fail to meet their targets are subject to sanctions, which may include allowing parents to send their children to other schools and “special supplementary services, funded by their local school district,” according to CSE Report 654 (www.cse.ucla.edu/reports/R654.pdf) The report by the UCLA Center for the Study of Evaluation describes the history and theory of current testing programs.

The purpose of tests like the CST is to “help all children reach the same ambitious content standards,” the report concludes.

Individual student scores will be mailed home within seven to ten days, Deasy said Thursday night.