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Mountain View Whisman saw test scores drop this spring after years of largely consistent improvements, results that are in line with state and national trends that illustrate the impact of the pandemic and school closures on students’ learning.
The share of Mountain View Whisman students who “met” or “exceeded” state standards in English language arts this spring dropped 4.9 percentage points compared to 2019. That’s compared to an average 2.6 point drop in schools across Santa Clara County and 4 point drop statewide.
In math, Mountain View Whisman saw a 4.3 point drop in students meeting or exceeding the standards, compared to 5.2 points countywide and 6.4 points across the state.
According to Superintendent Ayindé Rudolph, the data shows that Mountain View Whisman is in many ways a microcosm of larger shifts.
“What’s being reported nationally is true in our district,” Rudolph said. “Students of color, students that are at risk, so either (homeless or low-income), were impacted adversely by the pandemic.”
On Oct. 24, the California Department of Education released the 2021-2022 test results for the Smarter Balanced assessments in English language arts and math. Students take the exams in third through eighth grade and again in eleventh grade. Mountain View Whisman is an elementary and middle school district.
This past spring marked the first year of regular testing since before the pandemic. Tests weren’t administered in the 2019-2020 school year and were optional in 2020-2021. The exams were shorter than their pre-pandemic counterparts, but the state said the scores had the same accuracy because questions were reduced consistently across all test areas, according to the nonprofit news outlet EdSource.
Both in California and across the country, standardized test results have shown sizable drops.
“These baseline data underscore what many of us know: that the road to recovery is long and our students will need sustained support over many years,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said in a press release.
As was true before the pandemic, the share of Mountain View Whisman students who passed both the English and math exams is well above the state average and somewhat above Santa Clara County’s average.
In Mountain View, 66.1% of students passed the English exam this spring, compared to 60.6% countywide and 47.1% across California. When it comes to math, 59.4% of Mountain View Whisman students passed, compared with 51.4% in Santa Clara County and 33.4% throughout California.
However, large and long-standing gaps in achievement between student groups within Mountain View Whisman remain, and in some cases widened substantially during the pandemic.
Only a quarter of Latino students passed the math exam this spring, compared to 80.7% of white students and 90.1% of Asian students. In other words, over three times as big a share of white and Asian students are meeting state standards in math as their Latino peers.
Latino students also saw particularly sharp declines during the pandemic. There was an 11 percentage point drop in Latino students passing the math exam, compared to a 3.3 point dip for white students and a 1.3 point increase for Asian students.
When it comes to English, there was an 11.3 point drop in the share of Latino students meeting or exceeding standards, compared to a 4 point drop for white students and a 0.5 point increase for Asian students.
While the state reports data for any group with more than 10 students, when the population of students in a certain category is small, the data can be more volatile over time. For example, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students saw 23.8 point declines in the share passing both math and English, but there are only 15 Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students in the district.
Similar, though less extreme, disparities were seen when looking at economic status. There was a 9.5 point drop in the share of students considered “socioeconomically disadvantaged” who passed the English test, compared with a 6.6 point drop for non-socioeconomically disadvantaged students. For math, there was an 8.2 point drop for socioeconomically disadvantaged students, compared with 6.9 percent for all other students.
The state determines whether a student is socioeconomically disadvantaged based on family income, as well as if they are migrant, homeless or in foster care, or if neither parent graduated from high school.
Rudolph pointed to the results at Mariano Castro Elementary School as an example of the disproportionate impact of the pandemic. Over 80% of students at Castro were socioeconomically disadvantaged last school year, far higher than the district’s 27.2% average.
At Castro, the share of students passing both the English and math test this spring was less than half of what it was before the pandemic. Only 16% of Castro students met or exceeded state standards in math, compared with 32.9% in 2019. In English, 21.9% met or exceeded standards, versus 48.8% in 2019.
According to Rudolph, many families at Castro are employed in the service industry and had to work in-person while schools were closed and their children were taking classes online.
“The demands on them were a lot harder. They had the highest COVID rates at Castro. Internet access was a lot harder over there. … Every issue that was a part of the pandemic was ten times worse in that area compared to other places,” Rudolph said.
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It was known in the 9 months before the Pandemic, that Castro (high disadvantaged) had much less home internet access than other schools. Also lacked home computers. The iReady program was nevertheless ‘rolled out’ to all school with the ‘assumption’? that all students would have equivalent access to the work-at-home features of this web-based education program. (paid by district).
So, on top of other things, the Castro and other economic disadvantaged kids had INFERIOR access to computer learning tools based on the curriculum they were suppose to learn. It took till the next school year to correct this Very Basic and Fundamental flaw in equal access. (forget the ‘equity’, these families needed extra training on using internet education tools, ie more $$ spent on them)
So Much for the 20% extra state funding, per student, for the education of those poor family students. (LCFF by-pupil Grant mechanism).