State test scores go, well, nowhere
Past trend of rising student proficiency hits wall in both math and English
Breaking with its steadily upward trend, California’s annual test scores have stagnated, with fewer than half of students proficient in math and English, and a wide ethnic achievement gap persisting.
State scores released Wednesday show just 49 percent of students proficient in English and 37 percent proficient in math. The numbers are half a percentage-point different from 2016 — down in English and up in math. Tests were administered last spring to students in third through eighth grades and 11th grade.
The state’s education leaders played down the
results.
“Test scores are not the only way to look at how students are doing,” state Board of Education President Michael Kirst, a professor emeritus at Stanford, wrote in an email. He cited graduation rates, suspension, enrollment in college-prep and advancedplacement classes as other measures of school performance.
“Our watchwords are patience, persistence, humility and continuous improvement,” he wrote.
Likewise, Tom Torlakson, state superintendent of schools, issued a written statement celebrating 2016 gains (of 3 percent), the number of students tested (3.2 million) and the rigor of the tests.
Critics, however, lambasted those responses.
“The state has given itself permission to fail,” said Ryan Smith, executive director of the Education Trust-West, an Oaklandbased research and advocacy organization.
As evidence of that, he said, “couple scores with an accountability plan that doesn’t hold schools responsible and a report card that parents need a degree in analytics to read.” He was referring to California’s education plan that critics see as letting failing schools off the hook, and the state’s colorful but confusing online “dashboard” that’s intended to depict school progress.
California isn’t alone in its stagnating scores and in fact compares favorably with the 12 other states, plus the U.S. Virgin Islands, that administered the same tests last spring from the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. Scores decreased in every state, and California’s decline was about the smallest, retired educational testing specialist Douglas McRae said.
Those languishing scores have raised questions about the quality of the test itself.
“It stands out like a sore thumb,” said McRae, of Monterey. “You have to ask the question: Is it because of the performance of students in schools, or is it something with the test?”
McRae thinks the test is faulty.
Statewide, scores flatlined, from high-scoring suburbs to inner cities and rural areas.
In both the Fremont and Pleasanton unified school districts, English and math scores were identical to previous years. In Palo Alto, where high scores fuel a roaring housing market, both math and English scores fell 3 points. In the San Mateo-Foster City School District, scores in various grade levels and sub-areas were flat or declined up to 2 percentage points — “not a significant change,” spokeswoman Amber Farinha wrote in an email.
Charter schools posted varied scores but mostly reflected the marginal changes that other public schools did. Rocketship Education’s 12 Bay Area elementary schools (its newest campus did not have reportable scores) gained 3 points, reaching 44 percent in English and 54 percent in math. The charter chain serves predominantly students from poor and immigrant families.
Last spring was the third administration of the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, as Smarter Balanced is known in this state. It is a computer adaptive test — meaning as the test progresses, questions become harder or easier depending on the student’s answers. The test also includes “performance tasks” where students apply knowledge to analyze a real-world problem.
While proficiency levels took a dive when the state switched from multiplechoice tests to the more sophisticated and challenging CAASPP, scores were expected to rise as the Common Core curriculum and the tests became more familiar.
McRae cites national data indicating a test problem and decries the opaque testing body that he said has refused to divulge critical information that could help analyze the integrity of the test.
Flat or declining test scores alone do not signal a school problem, especially in districts such as Piedmont Unified, where scores fell but remain in the mid80s.
But persistently low achievement rates of African-American, Latino, poor, English-learner and disabled students, who together make up a majority of the state’s public-school students, fuel criticism of the educational status quo.
In Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, home to some of the state’s highestperforming schools, Latino English proficiency is identical to the state’s: 37 percent. Latino math proficiency in the two counties is 27 percent, two points higher than the state figure — but more than 50 points lower than Asian math proficiency in the counties.
Several Bay Area school districts serving large numbers of Latinos can’t even match the state’s proficiency levels. San Jose Unified’s Latino math proficiency is 22 percent, a 1-point increase from last year but 5 points below the state. The figures are 21 percent in Mount Diablo Unified in Concord, 16 percent in West Contra Costa Unified in Richmond, and 15 percent in Oakland Unified.
Those numbers alarm critics who see no political will to act. “California’s current direction is not moving us forward,” said Smith, who blames state leaders, from Gov. Jerry Brown on down. “There’s a lack of a sense of urgency on this issue.”