APR: Achievement gap narrows, fed standards tighten
The academic performance of California’s public schools continues to grow, and the performance gap between student subgroups to narrow, but much remains to be done—and sanctions for falling short of federal targets are ramping up, according to state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell.
“We’re seeing signs of the achievement gap narrowing,” O’Connell said Sept. 4 as he released the 2007-08 Accountability Progress Report, which combines the state Academic Performance Index with two metrics from the federal No Child Left Behind Act: adequate yearly progress and Program Improvement.
Statewide student API data show double-digit growth among all student subgroups, led by Hispanic students’ 17-point gain over their 2007 base API; overall student scores rose 14 points. Fifty-three percent of schools met their API growth targets this year, an increase of 8 percentage points from 2007. Thirty-six percent of all California schools are now at or above the state target of 800, up 5 percentage points from the year before and marking six straight years of growth, O’Connell said.
CSBA Executive Director Scott P. Plotkin welcomed the news.
“California pioneered the new era of education accountability with reforms that have now been in place for nearly a decade,” Plotkin said, referring to the introduction of the STAR program and API in 1999, two years before Congress passed NCLB. “Educators and governance teams working at the local level have embraced those measurements and the high expectations they represent. We must continue to adhere to those goals while we also work to ensure that we have realistic, reliable and effective measurements of our progress toward them.”
However, federal AYP measurements are more problematic. AYP focuses on scores at the proficient level or above on state English language arts and math assessments, and the percentage of students required to meet California’s standards—among the highest in the nation—ratchets up from year to year until 2014, when every student in every subgroup is required to test proficient or above in English and math.
Because of the higher minimum proficiency requirements this year, schools and LEAs meeting AYP all fell 15 percentage points, to 52 percent for schools and 39 percent for LEAs. The SBE earlier this year authorized the first district-level interventions, which generally require districts to work with authorized District Assistance and Intervention Teams on plans to improve their academic performance.
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