Gilroy
– Public school students’ test scores are out, and after four
years of steady progress, improvement in the district is at a
standstill.
Gilroy Unified School District mirrored a statewide trend in the
Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Program scores released
Monday morning: Despite some areas where the improvement seen over
the past several years continued, other areas were stagnant or
lagged behind, particularly high school-level math.
By Lori Stuenkel
Gilroy – Public school students’ test scores are out, and after four years of steady progress, improvement in the district is at a standstill.
Gilroy Unified School District mirrored a statewide trend in the Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Program scores released Monday morning: Despite some areas where the improvement seen over the past several years continued, other areas were stagnant or lagged behind, particularly high school-level math.
This year’s scores should serve as a wake-up call for everyone involved in education, said state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell, shortly after releasing the STAR results.
“After five years of steady, significant and sustained progress, some have said in our department, a leveling-off should not be a surprise; but I believe we can continue to scale that educational mountain,” O’Connell said. “If we re-commit to standards-based education, I’m confident we can see sustained improvement.”
GUSD Superintendent Edwin Diaz said such a leveling-off would eventually take place given the district’s steady improvement, but he wasn’t expecting to see a stall this year.
“I anticipated, and I think most of us in the system anticipated a bigger and more consistent jump throughout the district,” he said.
STAR uses both the California Standards Test (CST), based on curriculum taught in this state, and the California Achievement Test (CAT-6), which compares students nationally.
Fewer GUSD students passed the benchmark on the CST this year than in the past two years. In language arts, 33 percent scored at “proficient” or “advanced” – the top two tiers on a five-tier scale. In 2003, 34 percent were proficient or above, an improvement over the 30 percent in 2002.
In math, 26 percent of GUSD students were proficient or above on the CST. That number was down from 30 percent last year. In 2002, it was 23 percent.
Also, fewer students moved from the lowest two rankings of “far below basic” and “below basic” to the higher levels. Moving students up a tier or two, even if they’re not proficient, helps schools in the state’s ranking system.
“The data demonstrates that there is still a lot of work to do to help students achieve grade-level standards,” said Esther Corral Carlson, GUSD’s director of student assessment. “We need to go a lot deeper in linking the data to classroom instruction that’s tailored to meet the needs of students.”
In six of eight elementary schools, second grade scores went down, with some schools having fewer than 10 percent of students at or above proficient.
“I want to dig in a little deeper at the primary scores for second and third grade,” Diaz said. “It’s very critical that we get students at grade level by the time they exit third grade, so for me, that’s a huge concern and we should see some greater improvement at those grade levels.”
Grades two and three have received much focus as being indicators of school improvement. The state funds Class Size Reduction for those grades that limits classes to 20 students per teacher.
O’Connell called those grades the “engines to our train” of school progress in recent years.
A few schools bucked the overall trend toward leveling off, although none improved across the board. Antonio Del Buono Elementary School, Brownell Academy Middle School and Rod Kelley Elementary each had pockets of marked improvement.
“It seems to be they were definitely beating the district trend, but it also seems they beat the state’s trend as well,” Diaz said.
Principals at those schools could not be reached for comment Monday.
Del Buono’s fourth-graders held steady, while the second-graders declined. The third- and fifth-graders passing the language arts and math CST improved, with third grade math students increasing from 50 to 66 percent proficient or above, the second-best improvement of any group this year.
Fifth-graders fared the best district-wide, improving both in language arts and math – the only grade level to do so.
Brownell also posted one of the greatest gains in one specific area: Forty-one percent of sixth-graders were proficient or above this year, a gain of 17 percentage points over last year. Fourth graders at Eliot made a similar gain.
Second-graders at Rod Kelley, as well as Luigi Aprea, beat the district- and state-wide trend of declining scores.
Each school will be closely examining test scores in the days to come. Diaz said he expects GUSD will be able to pick up momentum to improve next year.
“I really believe that the process that we went through this last spring, in relation to the Strategic Plan and also developing the Accountability Plan, has really identified the next steps for us and so I think the path that we’re headed on is the correct path,” he said. “It’s becoming apparent that at school sites, they need to do a deeper analysis of their data and develop strategies to address areas of concern.”
Under its previous Strategic Plan, the district sought to have 90 percent of students at or above proficient by this summer, with no group of students more than 5 percent behind. The new plan focuses on advancing all students, regardless of their starting point.
District officials pointed out that GUSD scores remain higher than they were two years ago, by three percentage points in both language arts and math.
School board trustees and candidates reached for comment Monday had not yet viewed the STAR results.
Neither district nor state officials were ready to make any predictions of how schools will fare two weeks from now, when the state and federal governments release the Academic Performance Index (API) and Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) reports.
The state’s API rates schools and districts based on how much test scores are improving. AYP, the cornerstone of No Child Left Behind, requires that a certain percentage of students – including subgroups – are proficient or advanced, and that 95 percent completed testing.
“I haven’t really done that analysis yet,” Diaz said. “I’m sure there still exists a gap (between subgroups), but I need to look and see how much those subgroups grew or didn’t grow.”
To view the test results online, go to http://star.cde.ca.gov.
