Making the grade not so simple anymore
Color-coded matrix replacing the old API confusing for some
About one-quarter of California’s school districts don’t make the grade in serving students — either in achievement or other areas assessed under the state’s new school report cards.
Oakland, Hayward, Antioch, Mount Diablo and Pittsburg unified school districts and East Side Union High in San Jose are among the 228 poorest performers in the state.
Most of those districts fail to meet benchmarks for one or two groups of students, particularly with those who have disabilities. In East Side, for example, the district fell short in that category as well as with homeless and foster youth students.
The online color-coded reports released this week feature a five-tier rating of districts and schools, the first time in four years that the state is grading public schools. The new system replaces the Academic Performance Index, known as the API, that awarded a single number to
“It’s very, very hard to understand. I would love to see clear data as to how schools are performing, even schools in affluent neighboring cities.” — Cecilia Barragan of East Palo Alto, mother of a first-grader
reflect a school’s achievement and allowed for at-aglance comparison among campuses.
The new report grades schools both on achievement as well as improvement, so a school district’s score may seem contradictory.
Mount Diablo Unified, for example, failed in some areas for homeless students, foster youth and African-Americans, even though graduation rates for black students grew by 8.2 percent, the most of any group in the district.
The California School Dashboard displays a 1-to-5 rating of schools’ and school districts’ achievement in math and English, based on last spring’s statewide tests. The dashboard also reflects graduation rates, Englishlearner progress and suspension rates.
But many parents find the new system confusing.
“It’s very, very hard to understand. There’s too much going on,” said Cecilia Barragan of East Palo Alto, mother of a first-grader. For non-English speakers, the nuances of the website are nearly impossible to decipher, she said. “I would love to see clear data as to how schools are performing, even schools in affluent neighboring cities.”
The state’s previous API, which awarded schools a number between 200 and 1,000, made comparing schools across the state easy.
But to compare schools or districts through the new database is a tedious, clunky exercise, critics say — and it’s purposely designed that way.
“The dashboard is a tool to identify groups of students that are struggling,” said Scott Roark, spokesman for the California Department of Education. “This is not a tool for ranking districts, or comparing them.”
Reducing schools’ worth to a single number — as the API tests did — was attractive to parents, the public and especially real estate agents marketing properties in desirable areas. But the API oversimplified and disregarded many factors that go into a school’s accomplishments and student achievement, argued critics, including teachers unions.
The API ended in 2013, just as the state was transitioning to the Common Core State Standards and a new testing regimen. Shortly after, the federal government ended its No Child Left Behind oversight of schools serving poor children, and de-emphasized standardized testing.
State education leaders have labored over new and varied ways to report schools’ achievement. The dashboard later will be supplemented with data on absenteeism, AP courses and college readiness.
That’s good, said Carl Cohn, executive director of the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence, a state-funded group tasked with steering help to struggling school districts.
“This multiple measures accountability system is the beginning of a robust conversation at the local level to actually help kids,” he said.
But others fear the complexity masks the message. “We think the dashboard misses the mark. It doesn’t yet give the detailed guidance a school or district needs to improve and close achievement gaps,” said Ryan J. Smith, executive director of Education TrustWest, an Oakland-based education civil rights organization, in an email.
Furthermore, he said, the dashboard doesn’t present information clearly, isn’t fully translated into Spanish and leaves parents uncertain how their school is performing.
Barragan prefers another website, GreatSchools.org, run by a nonprofit that crunches state data into rankings that are simpler and more accessible.
The newly published dashboard includes a searchable database for school districts and schools, at http://www6.cde.ca.gov/californiamodel/.
The state is careful to emphasize that school districts receiving low ratings are being singled out for help, not punishment, and will receive guidance — and not orders — from the county offices of education.