Cabrillo Unified gets mixed results in state school scores

Half Moon Bay High School did very well in the state’s Academic Performance Index scores, which were released last Thursday.  The performance of the District’s other schools was lackluster.

The API is a complex index created from the schools’ scores on multiple tests that are administered by the state. The statewide target score on the API is 800, and schools are rated based on their progress toward that goal. They are expected to increase their scores by five percent of the difference between their earlier score and the goal. If their API is 781 to 799, the annual growth target is one point. At that rate, a school would take more than 20 years to reach the state’s target score.

Schools are also compared to similar schools. For each school, a set of 100 similar schools is selected based on student demographics, teacher qualifications, class size, and other factors.

In 2004, Half Moon Bay High School blew away its five percent target, and its API is now nearly equal to the average score for similar schools.

Farallone View Elementary, the only other CUSD school to increase its API, is still far from matching the performance of similar schools. It’s 2004 score is 758, compared to 819 for similar schools.

El Granada, Hatch, and Cunha all declined slightly. But, then so did schools similar to Hatch and Cunha.

"You really have to look behind these scores," says Madaline Shearer, the District’s Assistant Superintendent/Curriculum and Instruction. "The Board has said many times that this is one score at one time and that you have to look at individual factors and individual students." Shearer also noted that Hatch has improved for the previous four years, while its number of English language learners has increased, and that this year’s redistricting is going to make it difficult to compare yearly performance in individual schools in the future.

As for HMB High, Shearer said that the District had felt for some time that high school students hadn’t been taking the tests seriously, because their score doesn’t really affect them personally. But, she said, the school has done a much better job lately of motivating the students.

What does this all mean? This stuff is fraught with significance, but the differences seem miniscule. Is it really important that Cunha’s score declined by three points instead of increasing by two as the state’s target would have it? It’s not even clear to me that these differences are more than statistical noise.

I don’t envy the District having to interpret this information, act on it, and report it to parents.