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The long-awaited results of the first Common Core-aligned standardized tests show that Mountain View schools are outperforming the state average, in some cases by a wide margin.
But it’s not all good news. While state and local school officials have cautioned the community to take the results with a grain of salt, the performance gulf between students in different ethnic and socioeconomic groups remains a serious concern.
The test results, referred to as California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) scores, were released Wednesday by the California Department of Education and show how many students met state standards for English language arts and mathematics. And as many predicted, scores from the first rollout of the new test were less than great. Only 44 percent of California students met or exceeded the state standards in English language arts, dropping to only 33 percent for math.
In Santa Clara County, those numbers improve to 58 percent for English language arts and 52 percent for math, and Mountain View students, overall, did even better.
In the Mountain View Whisman School District, 60 percent of students met or exceeded state standards for English language arts and 54 percent met or exceeded standards for math.
Eleventh-grade students in the Mountain View-Los Altos High School District excelled in both fields, with 76 percent meeting the standards for English language arts and 66 percent for math.
Superintendent Jeff Harding said the high school district has been focused on professional development, particularly in getting teachers up to speed on the new Common Core standards.
“It’s been a real focus of the district, and I think the test scores are evident of our success here.”
But when the numbers are broken down, minority students in both districts are performing well below their peers, revealing an achievement gap that is, at times, larger than the state average. A majority of Latino students in both of Mountain View’s school districts, for example, failed to meet the state standards, with more than 70 percent of Latino students falling below the standards for math.
The gap between Asian and Latino students who met the standards across the state show a 48-point difference, with Asian students at 69 percent and Latino students at 21 percent. But in the Mountain View-Los Altos High School District, that increases to a 58-point difference, with Asian students at 87 percent and Latino students at 29 percent.
English learners and students in low-income families also fell short of the mark by a significant margin. In the Mountain View Whisman School District, only 17 percent of English learners and 26 percent of economically disadvantaged students were able to meet the standards for math.
County and state officials have called the large achievement gap a key concern revealed in the results. A report from the Santa Clara County Office of Education found that there is a “substantial” gap in performance between Latino students and their white and Asian peers, noting a significant 49-point difference in English language arts and a 57-point difference in math across the county.
State Superintendent Tom Torlakson also identified the achievement gap as a concern, pointing out that schools need to continue to work to eliminate gaps in student achievement.
“Much work needs to be done, but we are moving in the right direction,” Torlakson said in the press release.
Superintendent Ayindé Rudolph, who took over the Mountain View Whisman School District this summer, said it didn’t come as a surprise to him that there’s still an achievement gap, and that the issue is a national phenomenon. That said, he pointed out that it’s still an issue that the district needs to address.
“I think everyone acknowledges that we still have work to do to make sure every student receives a quality education,” Rudolph said. “We need to figure out what things we are doing well, and what things we are struggling with.”
The new test results will help guide the school district through its upcoming district-wide audit, which the school board approved last month. The $275,000 audit will be used to figure out what performance problems the schools, and the district office, have that are holding back student achievement.
Harding said it wasn’t a big surprise to see most English learners did not meet the standards, particularly in English language arts. He said the high school district needs to work to improve the test scores of the roughly 50 students in the district who are not proficient in English.
Data from the Mountain View Whisman School District also shows that Castro Elementary, which is now split off from the district’s Dual Immersion program, is now the lowest performing school in the district. Results from the study found 80 percent of the students at the school did not meet state standard for English language arts and math.
The school board voted to separate the school from the choice program last to better address the needs of the lower-performing students in the district by way of isolating the students at one school. Of the 334 students enrolled at Castro, 79 percent are English learners and roughly 80 percent are socioeconomically disadvantaged.
A new baseline
For months, school officials have stressed that the new test results need to be considered in context. It’s the first test aligned with Common Core standards and it’s the first test taken entirely on a digital platform, and should not, they argued, be compared to old standardized test results.
The Mountain View Whisman School District sent out an email to parents this week, referring to the new tests as “too fundamentally different from the old exams to make any reliable comparisons.”
Rudolph, who was previously a school administrator in New York and North Carolina, said he had been through a similar shift in curriculum standards in both states. In both cases, he said, there was a sizable drop in student proficiency on new standardized tests for the first year.
The Common Core tests come after a state-wide hiatus from the old Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) program, which ended in 2013 and largely determined the Academic Performance Index of schools throughout the state.
The test could also be seen as a measure for how well districts in the area prepared for the new Common Core curriculum. Preparation began as early as 2010 for the new standards, with the state pouring billions of dollars each year into local school districts for professional development and new teaching materials.
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Smuin Ballet will present a world premiere by Choreographer-in-Residence Amy Seiwert at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts Sept. 24-27. Photo by Keith Sutter. -
Cheryl Burke Dance Studio in Mountain View will host a social dance party on Saturday, Sept. 12, from 7 p.m. to midnight. Photo by Michelle Le. -
After seven years in business in Mountain View, Cheryl Burke Dance Studio will close its doors at the end of September. Photo by Michelle Le.
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These are HORRIBLE numbers. Sure, you are better than the dismal national average, but how hard is that apparently. These numbers, read another way, show that 40% of our kids are BELOW the average for English ability, and 46% are BELOW the average for Math standards. Seriously?!
And then later you are going to chastise companies for using H1B visas to get talent.
Let’s take that assessment money ($275K) that the board so irresponsibly approved to go into further analysis paralysis and spend it on the kids!!! The parents and teachers can give FREE advise AGAIN on what’s causing…”performance problems the schools, and the district office, have that are holding back student achievement.”
@Ron,
Understood.
But the tests are new (teachers really hadn’t even seen them before), online testing was new (kids hadn’t done much of this before), and the standards tested are new.
Really need to track improvement over time. That’s why the State Superintendent of Education advises this is a benchmark. And it’s just one measure taken on one day. But I’m sure the districts will work hard to improve (while likely being accused of “teaching to the test.”)
We are a community with many educated and talented people. Is there a way for those of us wth good English and math skills to volunteer to help the kids who need to catch up? Teachers are often spread thin and many parents work long hours. Perhaps this is a good opportunity for community building along with raising some grades and lowering some kids’ test stress
It’s much harder to “teach to the test” when students have to include in their answer just how they got there. This is one of the features of Common Core.
Just as much as the district needs to offer ongoing professional development to teachers to adapt to the new standards and skills to teach, we have to work on kids getting used to online test taking and adaptive tests. The fill-in-the-bubble days are almost gone and, for those without regular access to technology, these new tests present extra challenges for the district and its students. It’s interesting information that they released, but certainly only a baseline and a start for feedback.
I’m not sure about that leap Ron of Waverly Park makes as there’s been an awful lot of discussion and examples of companies using H1B visa employees as a cheaper option even though the talent is already here. Regardless, I don’t think every MVWSD or MVLA student is interested in going into tech so it’s not even that relevant.
Like this income- and language-based inequality is a surprise? My sister is a grade school teacher in a Midwestern coal mining town with very poorly educated Anglo parents, and she says that the schools only can go so far to correct for lack of parental education and support at home. She says that many of their students are so poorly educated and treated at home that they are”ruined” by the time they get to Kindergarten. The teachers say “It all begins and ends at home.”
@Ron
“46% are BELOW the average for Math standards”
Stop and think for a second what the definition of “average” is. Lacking math skills indeed.
Don’t blame the school or the teachers. Parents need to be making sure their kids do their homework and understand it.
@Steve: This is not a hostile response but rather a friendly one because you have spoken the politically-incorrect truth that most of our educators and school board members don’t dare say, even though they know it’s true.
Education begins at from birth and not when the kids finally get to public schools at age 5. So, the impossible political question is — how do we force poorly educated and abusive parents to prepare their children to be successful in public school? Does government have the right to step into ignorant and abusive families and take their children from them just to save their children from lives of poverty, crime, and unemployable ignorance?
I think this is a little overblown. All the students I have met in Mountain View schools are great kids. None of them are “ruined” or destined for lives of poverty and crime because they didn’t do well on a standardized test.
I’m sad to admit I think the district actually did better than I expected. However those are averages. A quick look at the data shows some of our schools did great, while others did pretty bad. It’s pretty sad to see a district with such extremes on both ends. Is this common in California? I expected differences between districts, but I didn’t expect so much variation within a district. Pretty sad we haven’t found a way to plan our schools to be more equal. I think it hurts all our kids.
I’ve been working with students at the school (as a reading/lit volunteer) for 13 yrs. As someone else pointed else, it doesn’t matter how many volunteer hours or dollars you throw at the underperforming schools and students, unless they do the work at home (parents who support and value education, enough room/quiet place to study), nothing is going to change.
Many people do no understand the situations some of these students face at home with multiple families living under one roof (no room/quiet space to study), stressful situations where the parents are stressed about putting food on the table and making rent, having to take care of younger siblings). The answer is multifold and will take generations of lifting families out of poverty and teaching them the importance of educating their young.
The two neighboring school districts, who pay at least $750 a parcel in taxes, had numbers at least 20% better than MVWSD. That money pays for 20 per class in lower grades, more aides, and more intervention. We have no one to blame but ourselves when we are putting 28 kids in kindergarten classes.
We need to pay more to get more. The new parcel tax should be at least $400, not a paltry $200. I would happily pay $600 per year to have better quality schools.
The neighboring districts you speak of (assuming LA and PA and not Sunnyvale) do not have NEARLY the amount of ESL students. You can’t buy that away. Not for all the parcel taxes you can throw at it.
If you take the ESL kids out of the equation, I bet we see things much more evenly across the immediately neighboring districts.
The fact that MV can put up those numbers even with the ESL population shows how fantastic the schools are. Don’t get hung up on the numbers. A kid at Bubb or Huff is getting no less an education that a kid a Springer or Loyola, and IMO they get a better sense of community and diversification.
“So, the impossible political question is — how do we force poorly educated and abusive parents to prepare their children to be successful in public school? ”
Nobody needs to be forced. Just educated that education is the key to success. Visit a Kumon class and you’ll see people who understand that.
“I have enough other things to juggle that are just as important; playdates for social interaction, sports for physical activity, piano for music exposure. Not to mention dinner for sustenance, baths for cleanliness,”
I’ll venture a guess that your kids are not struggling in school. In any case, kids without playdates, sports, piano, gourmet food and even baths will do just fine. Kids without education will struggle.
I’m not sure I’m following or understanding a lot of the comments here. While I agree with the idea that reinforcement begins at home I disagree that parents should be so involved in education. Why are we sending our kids to school then? Shouldn’t they be learning THERE? (if they’re not then I should be homeschooling). I’m not an educator, I’m a PARENT. I have enough other things to juggle that are just as important; playdates for social interaction, sports for physical activity, piano for music exposure. Not to mention dinner for sustenance, baths for cleanliness, reading/bedtime for sanity. And now I need to be teaching at home as well? I am finding it increasingly difficult to also now be the one sitting for approx 1 hour/night (grade school children) going over homework i.e. things they should have learned in class, and these overblown over-the-top projects that are mostly done by parents while their kids sit by and watch.
What’s the answer? I don’t have one. I think there are going to be kids that do well and kids that don’t. Teachers that are awesome and who encourage kids from all socio-economic backgrounds to excel and teachers that just promote kids to the next level. So where does that leave us?
The point I was trying to make is that I agree parents should be encouraging of education but we shouldn’t be responsible for it. If it’s not being supported and encouraged at home, how much more responsibility can you expect the schools to take on? They’re not allowed to discipline yet are expected to turn out “high” test scores. What’s the answer?
@Steve: Seriously? Did you just insult my math skills by demonstrating NONE of your own. The AVERAGE, Steve, does NOT mean that half are above and half are below. THAT would be the median. 46% below average IS miserable. Let me give you an example. If 5 kids had tests scores out of 10 that were 7,7,7,6 and 7, the average score would be 6.8, with 20% of the kids below average and 80% above average. If 5 kids had scores of 6,7,7,7 and 8, the average would be 7 with 20% below average and 20% above average.
Being happy that around half the kids are below average suggests a HUGE bell curve where mediocrity is celebrated as a huge victory, and half of our kids cannot even achieve that.
Math skills indeed. I hope you are not a teacher responding to the article.
Average vs. median LOL
Thanks Ron. You beat me to it.
Mean and Median are both types of averages. In a Normal distribution–they have the same value numerically.
So some of the comments are saying that is typical to find a non-normal distribution in the performance of individual kids. This really indicates other factors–cross variables–at play. In the case of MVWSD ELL status is not the big factor, but rather low socioeconomic status. As the article states, the achievement gap is what is shown clearly by the scores as reported.
The state data allows you to take any individual school and look at the score average (mean) for with and without socio-economic disadvantage. Too bad the article didn’t do that. A lot of the comments here relate to that variable, but they don’t seem to realize that the scores are reported both ways regarding that variable, as well as in the overall case.
@Ron
For a normal distribution the average is the median.
Not only are your math skills lacking, so are your reading skills. The article states that 54% met or exceeded the *standard*. It doesn’t say that 54% exceeded that average or median – because derp.
Someone expressed interest in taking a look at the detailed test results. I have downloaded them from the state website, and done my best to convert them into a useful format. This file contains all the results for all student subgroups at all public schools in Santa Clara County.
For the foreseeable future, the resulting Excel spreadsheet will be available here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mkpcaoxkn6wqmjl/ca2015_scc_compact.xls?dl=0
If you have feedback on this spreadsheet, or ideas for improving on it, please email them to me at gcoladonato@mvwsd.org.