Familiar story in state test scores
Progress, but gap in achievement persists
Every year, state education officials release standardized test scores — and every year they say the same thing: The achievement gap persists. This year’s scores are no different. Education officials across California released their scores Wednesday, each highlighting what they saw as positive news in the data while lamenting the stubborn, and in some cases widening, achievement gap.
Despite decades of effort and billions of dollars in funding, test scores for white, Asian American and wealthier students are much higher than those of their black, Latino and low-income peers. On computerized tests administered in the spring, for example, just 19 percent of African American students were proficient in math, compared with 73 percent of Asian American students.
In San Francisco, school leaders noted that the city was the only urban district in the state where more than half of students were proficient in both math and English. The middle schools showed significant gains this year in both subjects, with students of color mirroring the increases.
The achievement gap actually widened, though, including a 58point difference between white and black San Francisco students in English — a 77 percent proficiency rate compared with 19 percent.
“Closing the opportunity gap remains our top priority,” said San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Vincent Matthews.
Statewide, results changed little year-to-year, with just over 37 percent of students meeting state standards in math, up a fraction of a percent from 2016 scores. Slightly more than 48 percent were proficient in English, a half percent down from the previous year.
On the plus side, said state Superintendent Tom Torlakson, this year’s results maintained the significant gains made between 2015 and 2016. But there was a caveat.
“I’m pleased we retained our gains, but we have much more work to do,” he said. “We need to work diligently to narrow achievement gaps and make sure all students continue to make progress.”
“If (the achievement gap) was the state’s highest priority then something would have been done by now.” Ryan Smith, executive director of nonprofit the Education Trust-West
That has been a nearly constant refrain for decades, with state and local education officials as well as several U.S. presidents pitching reforms intended to close the gap.
Some efforts have focused on bettering preschool, others on lifting teacher performance. President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind policy threatened low-performing schools, while President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top program made struggling schools compete for pots of cash.
There was California’s class-size reduction program in 1996 and, in recent years, a state education-funding formula that gives more money to schools with disproportionate numbers of low-income students or English learners. So far, nothing has worked, at least systemwide and over the long haul.
“If it was the state’s highest priority then something would have been done by now,” said Ryan Smith, executive director of the Education Trust-West, a nonprofit group focused on the achievement gap. “I question if the state believes we can ever close the gap for lowincome students and students of color.”
Smith said the state must not only increase funding for education to put California on par with other states but also track how districts are spending the money and hold them accountable.
“Sixty years after the Little Rock Nine and we’re still talking about providing quality education for all students,” he said. “Where’s the urgency?”
Though the state previously relied on test scores alone to evaluate the education system, the California Department of Education has since developed a broad matrix that offers parents and educators a more comprehensive assessment of schools, including graduation and suspension rates.
Some of these additional indicators, officials said, show state schools headed in the right direction. Both the high school graduation rate and college eligibility rate are at all-time highs, said Mike Kirst, president of the state Board of Education.
The achievement gap exists well before students arrive for their first day of public school, with poverty and other factors influencing how prepared children are to learn to read and write.
But public education can exacerbate the gap, experts say, with disadvantaged students more likely to have less experienced teachers, for example, as wealthier communities and highly educated parents pour extra resources into their children’s classrooms.
“I would like to see the achievement gap closed, but not at the expense of my kids — I think everybody feels that way,” said Andy Porter, dean of the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. “That’s an extremely powerful force.”
At Peralta Elementary School in Oakland, which has relatively few low-income students, parents raise nearly $300,000 for their 300 children. Three blocks away, parents at Sankofa Academy, where 90 percent of families are lowincome, don’t have a fundraising organization — and in recent years have raised nothing, district officials said.
In the 2017 test scores, 11 percent of Sankofa’s students were proficient in English, compared with 77 percent of Peralta’s.
“It’s not an easy task to eliminate the achievement gap,” Porter said. “There are so many forces at work that have created this achievement gap and even served to expand it.”