More school districts struggling

374 out of roughly 1,000 fall into ‘red zone’ on key educational indicators

So many school districts are having such a hard time delivering the basics of an equal opportunity for an education that one in three statewide has been targeted for special assistance, according to a comprehensive state report card released by the California Department of Education Thursday.

The state identified 374 school districts out of roughly 1,000 that qualify for additional help — more than 60 percent more than last year, when the state issued its first set of ratings under the new “school dashboard” system.

School districts that qualify for the so-called “State System of Support” show such low scores or so little progress among student groups that they fall into a “red zone” on two or more educational indicators, from test scores to suspension rates and chronic absenteeism. Last year, the state identified 228 such districts, but critics questioned the numbers, noting that test scores pointed to a far more widespread need for assistance. Since then, the dashboard has been tweaked.

Carrie Hahnel, interim co-executive director of Education Trust-West, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on closing student achievement gaps, said that means that one-third of the state’s districts “are struggling with equity.”

“(This) should create a tremendous urgency for our newly elected state leaders and local leaders to start to do something dramatically different to support our students so that several years from now, far fewer schools are struggling to create opportunities for all students,” Hahnel said.

The California School Dashboard, intended to offer a more holistic assessment of public school performance, was created in part to help the state identify low-performing school districts