San Diego County students showed gains on the state's latest standardized academic exams, exceeding state averages in math, English and other subjects. But the rising bar of federal standards threatens to diminish those improvements.
NANCEE E. LEWIS / Union-Tribune
Willy Chun, 10, was hard at work yesterday at Myrtle S. Finney Elementary School in San Diego.
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Results from the 2008 Standardized Testing and Reporting Program, released yesterday, highlighted the disconnect between the state's accountability system for public schools, which rewards schools for improving academic achievement, and the federal system of accountability, which sets fixed goals for achievement that all subgroups of students must meet.
“It's getting harder and harder to meet the (federal) targets, and whether you look at subgroups or the overall scores, there are going to be more and more schools that fail to meet the targets,” said David Silver, a senior researcher at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing at UCLA.
The federal system, mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, requires that all students, regardless of ethnicity, economic status or disability, score proficient in state academic exams by 2014.
This year, 35.2 percent of elementary school students – in all subgroups – must score proficient or better in English. In math, 37 percent of elementary school students must score proficient or better.
In San Diego County, some subgroups of students in some grades didn't make that bar, results show.
And the federal targets are going to get tougher to reach. The bar for proficiency in all subjects and grades will increase about 11 percent each year leading up to 2014. Schools that repeatedly fall short face federal sanctions, which include being taken over by the state.
Terry Grier, superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District, said he was pleased with improved test scores in his district in every subject and in every grade – particularly during a year disrupted by wildfires, his arrival as new superintendent in March and a budget crisis that forced $53 million in spending cuts.
For example, 48 percent of the district's eighth-graders scored proficient on the English exam – a 6 percentage point improvement over last year and a 15 percentage point jump over 2003.
Grier said he supports the focus on struggling students that No Child Left Behind demands. But the law is unfair, he said, for turning what he sees as a triumph – improving math and reading scores in sixth through eighth grades – into a failure because the federal goals for academic achievement keep getting progressively higher.
“When you look at scores like that, tell me whether or not that looks like failing middle schools to you,” Grier said. “They don't to me.”
Despite any controversies over rapidly rising federal goals for academic achievement, the persistent achievement gap among California's students – the general disparity in performance dividing white and Asian students on the one hand, and black and Latino students on the other – is stark. On the 2008 STAR exam for sixth-grade math, for example, 66 percent of white students and 77 percent of Asian students in San Diego County achieved proficiency. That compared with 32 percent for black students and 35 percent for Latino students.
Silver, from UCLA, called such disparities in achievement “staggering” and “unconscionable.”
Jack O'Connell, the state's superintendent of public instruction, said black students in particular are lagging.
“It is imperative that we help those students who have historically struggled the most to accelerate their learning so they may effectively and fully participate in school, the work force and in society,” O'Connell said.
Other highlights in San Diego County included:
Grossmont Union High School District administrators hailed a near tripling of students' pass rate on the state physics exam. In 2007, about 14 percent of Grossmont students who took the exam scored proficient or advanced. In spring tests this year, 41 percent passed. Administrators attributed the gains in part to increased teacher collaboration.
In the Escondido Union Elementary School District, students showed gains in most categories, including science and math.
In the Chula Vista Elementary School District, Harborside Elementary School showed impressive gains. The school, which was failing to meet federal targets for achievement in recent years, was reorganized with a new principal and new staff. The percentage of students at the school that scored proficient or better in fifth-grade English, for example, rose from 19 percent in 2007 to 52 percent this year. In fifth-grade math, proficiency levels jumped from 26 percent to 61 percent.
Bruce Lieberman: (760) 476-8205; bruce.lieberman@uniontrib.com
