Tue, August 17, 2004

CUSD’s report card: “Needs Improvement”


By on Tue, August 17, 2004

The state has released results on the California Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Test, and Cabrillo Unified’s results are unimpressive and unimproving. Taken as a whole, less than half the students in the district are performing at the proficient or advanced level, and there has been little improvement in the last two or three years.

There’s a lot of variability in the data, so it’s hard to read.  In 2004, the average proficiency in English across grades was 45%. The average percentage improvement since 2001 was about 3 percentage points. But there are huge differences among the classes and the numbers sometimes jump up one year and then down the next.

So, while there are bright spots, the overall picture is lackluster. The CAT/6 scores show that CUSD students are doing better than about half the students statewide.

According to the LA Times, this result is consistent with statewide performance on the test: 

Overall, results were mixed. The percentage of students scoring "proficient" or "advanced" increased one point in English-language arts. There was no change in math. Some grade levels advanced, but others declined in both subjects.

I think this raises the bigger question of whether we’re going to be able to improve test scores at all without significantly changing education in California, and whether any district can realistically be expected to do any more than hold its own.

I’m linking to the tables at the Los Angeles Times, since they do the best job of organizing the data, but you can get more detailed results, including results by subgroup, from the California Department of Education. The state’s reporting page for these results is very impressive and if you’re interested in exploring the data, I strongly recommend it.

Cabrillo Unified School District

La Honda-Pescadero Unified School District

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