Top Stories and Commentary for Friday, September 5, 2008

By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/KPCC

The state’s yearly Academic Performance Index scores are out. They went up statewide. The Los Angeles Unified schools as a whole also showed improvement.

By Deb Kollars/Sacramento Bee

The state released an array of data Thursday showing how California public schools are measuring up in educating children. The release of the 2008 Accountability Progress Reporting (APR) program came with some good news: Schools were narrowing the stubborn achievement gap between white and Asian students and those who are African American, Latino or learning the English language. If you feel you are experiencing deja vu, it is understandable. Less than a month ago, the state released another round of student performance data.

Results released this morning show that about 500 high schools reported meeting federal goals only because their passing marks were based on much higher exit exam scores.
By Howard Blume and Ben Welsh/Los Angeles Times

At least 500 California high schools met this year’s federal academic targets that were released this morning only because the state uses easier standards for high schools than for elementary and middle schools, a Times analysis has found. But even with this boost, only 48% of the state’s high schools met the federal standard of "adequate yearly progress" in this year’s results. The Times analysis identified about 500 high schools, including more than 150 continuation schools, reported as meeting all federal standards even though their combined proficiency scores in math or English language arts on the California standards tests fell below proficiency levels required this year.

Editorial/San Jose Mercury News

California released its annual schizoid report card on schools on Thursday, leaving parents and teachers perplexed about the status of their schools. By the state’s primary measure, the three-digit API score, most schools in Silicon Valley are continuing slow, steady progress; some, including a half-dozen downtown elementary schools in San Jose Unified, have made substantial gains. But by AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress, the federal measure under the No Child Left Behind law), many schools and districts will soon be falling hopelessly behind — if they aren’t already — and will face serious sanctions, possibly including closing schools and opening with new staffs and principals.

Blog by Katy Murphy/Oakland Tribune

It’s been almost a month since I’ve overloaded you with data. Good thing, because California’s No Child Left Behind and state Academic Performance Index results came out today. This was a tough year for schools across the state, simply because the federal test score standard rose again. For an elementary school to clear the NCLB hurdle, 35.2 percent of its students — on average, as well as in various racial and academic “subgroups — needed to have tested at “proficient” or better in English (up from 24.4 percent last year). And 33.4 percent had to do so in math (up from 22.3 percent last year). It’s a similar situation for upper-grade schools.

San Jose Mercury News

Groups representing school administrators and local education boards are challenging California’s requirement that all eighth-graders be tested in algebra. The California School Boards Association and the Association of California School Administrators filed the lawsuit Thursday. It seeks an injunction to prevent the state Board of Education from imposing the requirement. California is the first state to mandate algebra classes at such an early level. The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court, says the action by the state board was taken in violation of the state’s open-meeting laws.

Blog by John Fensterwald/San Jose Mercury News

Todays’ release of the annual report card on state schools revealed a predictably conflicting pattern: Most schools are making slow and steady progress on the state’s API index, and yet increasing numbers are failing the federal government’s AYP or Annual Yearly Progress measure under No Child Left Behind. The reason is that the state plays the turtle, setting modest targets for school improvement — 5 to 15 points increase yearly, toward the a goal of an 800 API score. The feds have become the hare (some might add, harebrained), demanding rapid growth toward the unrealistic goal that by 2014, every student in America is proficient in Math and English.

by Cheryl Corley/NPR

Organizers of a school boycott in Chicago are trying high-profile tactics to protest education funding. On Tuesday, more than 1,000 students skipped the first day of classes. On Wednesday, some classes were held in the lobbies of office buildings.

Massachusetts initiative seeks ‘seamless’ system, pre-K through college.
By Dakarai I. Aarons/Ed Week

With his own new education chief in place, Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts is moving forward with an ambitious education agenda for the state’s students that would include free access to community college for all state residents, a statewide teacher contract, and an aggressive dropout-prevention program. The first-term Democrat, a rising political star in the national party, used his turn in the spotlight at last week’s Democratic National Convention in part to emphasize education and its importance for the nation’s economic future. Those same themes are reflected in the governor’s Commonwealth Readiness Project, a 55-point plan that stretches into 2020 and is intended to address students’ educational needs from prekindergarten through college graduation.

Also Noted for Friday, September 5, 2008:

By Kristofer Noceda/San Jose Mercury News

Area school districts continue to show improvements on state standardized testing, but many still fail to meet federal expectations, according to Accountability Progress Reports, or APRs, released Thursday. APRs are a compilation of state and federal standardized test results, and are used by educators to gauge how well schools and districts are performing academically. Those figures include the state’s Academic Performance Index, or API, and the federal Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP, and Program Improvement designations.

By Jerry Berrios and George B. Sánchez/LA Daily News

Its students made modest gains in math and English this year, but the Los Angeles Unified School District still lags behind the state average and remains on a watch list for falling short of federal goals, according to state exam results released Thursday. LAUSD’s score on the Academic Performance Index - the state’s academic benchmark - rose by 21 points to 683 for the 2007-08 school year. The statewide average was 742, up from 728 in 2006-07. "We did well," LAUSD Superintendent David L. Brewer III said at a news conference in Sun Valley. "We still have a long way to go."

By Kimberly S. Wetzel/Contra Costa Times

Although many California schools meet or exceed state achievement hurdles, some continue to stumble over standards set by the federal No Child Left Behind Act and could find themselves on probation in the next couple of years, according to data released Thursday by the State Department of Education. In fact, six East Bay school districts are on probation for the first time this year. About 53 percent of California schools met state growth targets, which are measured by the academic performance index score — a number between 200 and 1,000 assigned to schools and districts, according to state officials.

However, most local districts see improvement on state’s standardized tests.
By Kevin Butler/Long Beach Press-Telegram

Facing tougher academic targets, fewer area schools this year met federal performance targets on standardized tests, according to data released Thursday by the California Department of Education. But most districts showed improvement on California’s academic performance standards, a different measure than that established by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Education officials on Tuesday released federal and state accountability results for schools and districts, based on a set of standardized tests students took earlier this year.

By Bruce Lieberman/San Diego Union-Tribune

The county’s public schools on the whole are getting better and continue to outpace the state average. But more than half of county schools are still not meeting the state’s target for academic performance, California’s latest report card shows. In San Diego County, 269 public schools, or nearly 44 percent, achieved an Academic Performance Index score of 800 or higher, the target score for all schools. Another 346 schools in the county did not reach the target. Statewide, 2,742 schools achieved a score of 800 – about 36 percent. Sage Canyon Elementary School in the Del Mar Union School District topped the county list, with an API score of 968.

By Cheri Carlson/Ventura County Star

Some of Ventura County’s lowest-performing schools improved their student test scores this year yet still fell below increasingly tough federal standards set by the No Child Left Behind Act. The California Department of Education released the state’s Accountability Report Card on Thursday, including results from the federal Adequate Yearly Progress report, required by the No Child Left Behind Act, and the state’s Academic Performance Index. The federal targets increased significantly this year, requiring schools and districts to have about 34 percent of students test at a proficient level or above in math and language arts, an 11 percent increase from the 2007 targets of about 23 percent.

By Nguyen Huy Vu and Melissa Pamer/Los Angeles Daily Breeze

Many South Bay and Harbor Area school districts exceeded state performance goals but some struggled with rising federal standards, according to the state’s annual accountability progress report released Thursday. Most local schools saw growth in their scores on the state’s Academic Performance Index (API), the measuring stick that calculates school performance based on yearly standardized tests. Despite those increases, more schools failed to meet federal guidelines, which this year raised the bar for student proficiency levels - an expectation that will continue to climb in coming years.

WEEKLY RECAP - Monday September 2 through Thursday September 4 , 2008

Blog by John Fensterwald/San Jose Mercury News (Tuesday)

Educated Guess has been consumed by the newspaper’s new computer system, which has been taxing this brain the past week, but a few items did catch its notice. Timely and full public access to data is one reform that doesn’t cost money but is critical to getting parents involved in their schools. There will be much more data in coming years, when the the individual student identifier numbers under the state’s CALPADS data collection system start generating schoolwide data and if and when more control over budgeting is passed down to the school site level. Battles over who gets to see what numbers, down to the classroom level, have yet to be decided. But the SARC (Student Accountability Report Card) remains a test run. According to Public Advocates, a San Francisco-based non-profit representing minority and poor kids, reports that most districts have finally gotten into the hang of posting their school report cards on the web in a timely and comprehensive way.

Results for Santa Clara county students’ are rising but not as fast as the U.S. governments expectations.
By Sharon Noguchi/San Jose Mercury News (Tuesday)

With federal standards getting much tougher this year, the state’s annual release of test scores — coming Thursday — has a lot of educators biting their nails. In 2007, 45 of Santa Clara County’s 392 public K-12 schools did not meet federal standards. If they had had to meet this year’s higher standards, 56 of them wouldn’t have measured up, a Mercury News analysis shows. Test scores in the county and across California have actually been nudging up every year because of greater academic rigor, more practice in test taking and a better match-up of what teachers teach and the state tests.

By Gabriel Kahn/Wall Street Journal (Wednesday)

As school kicks off this week here, so does Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s effort to salvage the city’s public education system by giving parents more control over who runs their children’s schools. Last school year, parents and teachers at 17 elementary, middle and high schools, including some of the city’s worst, were asked to choose whether they wanted the Los Angeles Unified School District to continue running their schools or turn over control to a new partnership created by Mr. Villaraigosa. Ten schools — serving 18,000 students — voted for the partnership and will open this fall under new management.

By Ben Thaler/Daily Bruin (Wednesday)

The UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies has partnered with the Los Angeles Unified School District to create the Bruin Community School, one of six pilot schools that will be implemented by the district. The pilot schools will operate independent of district regulations on hours and scheduling. The program was developed to reduce overcrowding and busing among LAUSD schools, said Karen Hunter Quartz, a researcher at the graduate school of education who is also director of research and development for the Bruin Community School. “(LAUSD) has decided to operate three high schools and three K-12 schools under the pilot program,” Quartz said. The Bruin Community School will open in September 2009.

By Stephen Sawchuk/Ed Week (Wednesday)

Faced with high energy costs and crimped budgets, school districts have cut administrative positions, bus routes, special services, and athletics programs. But as economic prospects worsen, the salaries and jobs of teachers are increasingly coming under green-eyeshade scrutiny. Districts in Alabama and Florida—two states that have been hard hit because of their reliance on sales taxes to finance education—have begun to cap hiring, eliminate staff positions, and cut salaries. In California, districts are still waiting to see how the state’s $15.2 billion deficit, the subject of an ongoing battle in the legislature, will affect the teaching force.

Latest numbers put new focus on reforms in city high schools.
Editorial/Sacramento Bee (Thursday)

The first part of the state’s new data system, accurate figures on dropouts, already is having the right effect on schools and districts. The new system means that fewer kids are likely to fall through the cracks, disappearing without a trace. In our highly mobile society, kids and families move a lot, and schools ought to be able to track them. Now they can do that with individualized information. And schools are on the spot to follow through. To be sure, the new information was a shock to schools, districts and parents when it came out in July. In every district in our region, the data meant that dropout rates increased compared with the old reporting system.

By Jay Mathews/Washington Post (Thursday)

A couple of years ago I debated Chris Peters, a thoughtful and energetic high school teacher in San Bernardino, Calif., about vocational education. He thought it had more value than I did and could energize students who can’t stand dry academics. I thought high schools were incapable of doing vocational ed well, and too often made it a dumping ground for students from low-income families thought incapable of college. We did not convince each other, but my recent column on the surprising results of research into high school career academies, showing they had great benefit for students’ job and family prospects, led him to conclude I was still educable on the subject came back to me with a plan to shake up high school in a way that would give both college-oriented and job-oriented students an equal chance, rather than force kids who don’t like school to stew in English and science classes.