Nearly 80% of California schools meet Academic Performance Index
goals, twice as many as last year. Still, many pupils continue to lag.
By Duke Helfand and Cara Mia DiMassa
Times Staff Writers
October 25, 2003
California high schools, which had been the weak link in efforts to
raise achievement levels, showed significant signs of improvement this
year on state tests, according to results released Friday.
More than two-thirds of high school campuses met test score goals set
by the state, twice as many schools as last year, the new statistics
showed.
Teachers and administrators attributed the improved results on the
state's Academic Performance Index to an intense focus on California's
academic standards in English and math, which spell out the skills and
material students are supposed to know at each grade level. For the
first time, those standards accounted this year for most questions on
annual standardized tests.
Experts also pointed to students' growing familiarity with the
5-year-old mainly multiple-choice exams, noting that schools regularly
give practice tests to get students comfortable with the format.
Jack O'Connell, the state superintendent of public instruction, said
that such "teaching to the test" makes sense now that all schools are
aware of what students need to learn. "If you are teaching to the
standards, you are simultaneously teaching to the test," O'Connell said.
The high school gains reflected broader improvementsin
kindergarten-through-12th-grade achievement this year on the Academic
Performance Index.
The higher scores, however, were tempered by students'
less-than-stellar performance on national tests and evidence that vast
numbers of California's public school students are not proficient in
grade-level reading and math.
Using a composite of test results, the index assigns scores to schools
on a scale of 200 to 1000, and sets improvement targets each year. The
goal for each school is 800.
The statewide median score for elementary schools this year was 728, up
29 points from the year before. Middle schools' median was 681, up 19
points. High schools remained the lowest scorers at 614 points, 25 more
than last year; but a greater percentage of high schools than ever
before met their targets for yearly improvement.
Overall, 78% of schools statewide met their targets this year, up from
52% last year. As in the past, elementary schools did best: 82% reached
their goals, an increase from 60% last year. Sixty-nine percent of
middle schools met the expectations, up from 38% last year. And 67% of
high schools met the state goals, compared with 30% last year.
(API scores for individual campuses are available on the Internet at
the California Department of Education's Web site at http://api.cde.ca.gov.)
But behind those optimistic figures are grimmer ones. For example, just
33% of 10th-graders and 32% of 11th-graders were deemed proficient in
English this year on the very state tests that were used to generate
the accountability scores, according to figures released in August.
Similarly, only 36% of fifth-graders were proficient in English.
The annual API goals stress a trend toward improvement more than they
concentrate on any absolute achievement score. The growth targets
assigned by the state Department of Education can be quite modest, as
small as just 10 points a year.
"Even if you are low-performing but improving, that's good news," said
Bill Padia, director of policy and evaluation for the Department of
Education. Padia said more schools met their accountability targets
this year by lifting the very lowest performing students out of the
bottom achievement rungs.
The tests show how well students are doing in key subjects such as
math, social studies and language arts. For second-graders, they can be
as simple as identifying words and their opposites and knowing the
meaning of simple prefixes such as "un." In high school geometry, test
takers must, for example, calculate the length of missing sides of
right triangles and compute the volume of a cone.
Gov. Gray Davis, who launched the index four years ago as the
foundation of California's school accountability system, touted
Friday's results as proof that his reforms were paying off for the
state's neediest students.
Davis, who will leave office next month after being recalled on Oct. 7,
appeared at Coliseum Street Elementary School in the Crenshaw district
of Los Angeles to make his last test score announcement as governor. He
told students: "You are my proudest achievement." The campus raised its
score by 114 points this year to 681.
Los Angeles Unified School District elementary schools as a whole
raised their median scores by 44 points, to 685. Although that score
remains 43 points below the state median, Los Angeles educators said
they were very pleased that 90% of their elementary campuses met their
state targets this year, up from 87% last year.
"This school district should be jumping with joy that in four years of
standards-based education we have come this far," said Supt. Roy Romer.
"It's very impressive, given all the urban challenges."
The district's middle schools, which scored 592, showed a growth of 30
points, and 71% met their targets, compared with 26% last year. Los
Angeles Unified's high schools, with a 534 index, also progressed but
more modestly, up 26 points; 55% of them met their targets, compared
with 13% last year.
Throughout Southern California, school administrators and teachers were
celebrating gains that surpassed state goals.
For example, Baldwin Park High School in the San Gabriel Valley saw its
accountability score jump by 110 points this year, to 595. It had to
gain only 16 points to meet its state target.
Beverly Hilliard, a geometry and algebra teacher at Baldwin Park High,
said most teachers followed a daily agenda that hewed closely to the
state standards, both in class and in homework. She said teachers
evaluated students' strengths and weaknesses on the previous year's
exam, which Hilliard called "a nice warmup to see where we needed to
go."
At El Rancho High School in Pico Rivera, administrators pored over
guidelines available on the Internet from the state Department of
Education, even down to the level of how many questions to expect on
each standard.
"The standards drive the curriculum," said Assistant Principal Felicity
Swerdlow, whose school jumped 50 points to 608. "It's opened up
professional conversations between teachers."
Among the highest scoring high schools in the state were Oxford High in
Cypress with 927, the California Academy of Mathematics and Science in
Long Beach with 906, San Marino High School with 875 and La
Cañada High School with 873.
California's education leaders have spent most of the last decade
trying to create a learning and testing system that unifies
instruction, textbooks and teacher training.
"It's taken several years to get a curriculum and an instruction
strategy that helps kids do well on these tests. It looks like we're
getting there," said Charles Weis, superintendent of Ventura County's
schools.
As in many locations around the state, high schools in Ventura County
showed much improvement: 77% met their state targets, up from just 24%
last year. The median countywide score for high schools was 680. The
figures do not include data from two of the county's largest school
systems, Oxnard and Ventura, whose scores will be delayed until
December.
Throughout Los Angeles County, the median score for high schools was
572, up 26 points from last year; 67% of the high schools hit their
targets compared with 33% last year.
In San Bernardino County, the median score for high schools was 611, a
36-point rise; 63% of those campuses made their state goals compared
with 20% last year.
Riverside County high schools had a median score of 571, up 27 points;
64% of the schools reached their targets, up from 38%.
The same pattern appeared in Orange County, where high schools overall
scored 702. There, 81% of high schools met their targets, up from 23%
last year.
While pleased, Orange County schools Supt. William M. Habermehl warned
that continued budget cuts could threaten the progress the state seems
to have made.
"When you increase class size, cut out counselors, administrators,
librarians and support staff, it doesn't show up right away," he said.
"But all those people and programs are fundamental to a strong
curriculum and kids performing well."
Times staff writers Jeff Gottlieb and Steve Chawkins, editor of
computer journalism Richard O'Reilly and data analyst Sandra Poindexter
contributed to this report.