GILROY
– Depending on who you ask, the state’s 3-and-a-half-year-old
academic ranking system isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
GILROY – Depending on who you ask, the state’s 3-and-a-half-year-old academic ranking system isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
After a week of digesting the latest round of standardized test data, and after three years of reacting to California’s system of monitoring student progress, opinions about the Academic Performance Index (API) range from “adequate” to “flawed.”
Those sentiments are echoed in Gilroy Unified School District which has seen many of its schools dramatically improve their API scores, yet consistently fall far behind the curve when compared to other schools. And the state’s most recent data shows things aren’t much different, especially for GUSD elementary schools.
Among the most controversial elements of the API is the similar schools ranking system. Meant to level the playing field for disadvantaged schools, the similar schools rankings compare a school to 100 others just like it in key demographic ways. Schools are considered similar when they have equivalent percentages of poor children, English Language Learners and under-qualified teachers, among several other things.
“The similar schools ranking is something I don’t really like because it can hide a school’s improvement,” said Heather Rose, a senior research fellow for the Public Policy Institute of California and an expert on kindergarten through high school education and test score gaps.
If a school is improving on standardized tests by, for instance, 20 points, but schools like it also gain 20 points from one year to the next, a similar schools ranking will not indicate any improvement, Rose said.
Rose’s point of view resonates with Gilroy Unified School District.
Despite districtwide instructional reforms, GUSD is showing disparate results in similar schools rankings. When compared to 100 schools just like them, three Gilroy elementary schools have become less competitive since 2000 and four fell back a notch from 2001 to 2002 (2003 tests will be taken in March and reported in October).
Yet when GUSD looks at its overall API performance from three years ago, there has been a turnaround nothing short of remarkable.
In 2000, 80 percent of GUSD schools scored in the 600s or lower on the API, which has a range of 200 to 1,000 points. Latest results show 93 percent of GUSD schools scoring in the 600s and above.
“If I were a parent I’d be much more interested to see what a school’s actual API score is and whether it is going up or down over the years,” Rose said.
Meanwhile, both GUSD middle schools jumped two levels of similar schools rankings from 2001 to 2002. Since 2000, Gilroy High School and South Valley Middle School have climbed four similar schools levels.
“I’m comfortable with it,” says GUSD trustee David McRae of the similar schools rankings. “As a math major, I believe statistically they have leveled the playing field and I like the system they use. If there is an easier set of tests one year, rankings eliminate a false sense of improvement.”
McRae said he is encouraged by the overall improvement in API scores locally, but has concerns that elementary schools are not showing similar schools improvement.
District staff will likely make a formal presentation on the most recent data at the March 6 school board meeting. McRae said he will ask staff how far along the district is in implementing its new staff training and student intervention programs, which essentially began this school year.
“I believe these new strategies are effective and my sense is that they have not been in place long enough to see that yet. But I want to make sure,” McRae said.
For Rose, the similar schools ranking system is not an inherently unfair measurement. Rather, it lacks meaningfulness.
“As a general rule-of-thumb level of wealth and API rank are strongly correlated and the similar schools ranking does a good job grouping schools according to that,” Rose said. “But you have to ask yourself, ‘What does it really mean when my school goes up one level?’ ”
Las Animas Elementary, GUSD’s lowest performing school on the API, was the only elementary site to jump a level – from the second lowest tier to the third – on the similar schools ranking. According to Rose’s rough calculations, Las Animas Elementary, could have jumped another four levels had it improved its score by around 40 points, instead of about 25.
“That’s not that big of a jump, when you compare how much improvement you need to make to jump a level on the overall state rankings,” Rose said.
On the overall state rankings, which compares all schools in the state, Las Animas would have needed a 90 point improvement to go up to the sixth level, Rose said.
Robert Bernstein, a state education department administrator who is partially responsible for calculating the API formula, defends the similar school rankings and says it figures to be around for a while.
“It’s a fair deal for what it’s used for and it’s the best we can do,” Bernstein said. “It gets volatile sometimes, but we’re using similar schools rankings for information only.”
The state uses the overall rankings when rewarding schools that have improved or intervening at schools that haven’t, Bernstein said.
In order to get a clearer and more timely handle on how its students are progressing, GUSD makes each school administer a special standardized test three times a year, which teachers use to mark individual student progress.
Known as the Measure of Academic Progress (MAP), this test is being relied on by teachers and administrators, perhaps more than the API itself, to direct decision making in the GUSD.
Student test scores on the MAP have shown steady progress through the year, GUSD officials have reported. At Brownell Middle School, which faces state intervention due to two years of dwindling API scores, 800 of its 900 students made gains on the most recent MAP test.
