Sep 4, 2008 10:23 pm US/Pacific
Calif. Schools Report Finds 53% Meet State Goals
SACRAMENTO (BCN) ―
A report released Thursday by California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell showed a jump in the number of California schools meeting state education goals but a drop in those meeting federal targets.
The state's 2007-08 Accountability Progress Report includes results of the state's accountability system, called the Academic Performance Index, as well as the federal accountability system, which measures Adequate Yearly Progress.
In both, Standardized Testing and Reporting, or STAR, results and the California High School Exit Exam are taken into account.
O'Connell said this year's accountability report shows that schools are continuing to make progress.
He said 53 percent of schools met their growth targets in state accountability, an increase of 8 percent over 2007.
The state's Academic Performance Index ranges from 200 to 1,000 points, with a target score of 800. The report showed 36 percent of schools are at or above the 800-point target, a 5 percent jump from last year.
The report indicates the achievement gap between white and Asian students and their peers who are African-American, Hispanic or learning the English language is narrowing, but that it is still "unacceptably wide," O'Connell said.
"Closing this achievement gap remains a moral and economic imperative," he said.
According to the Academic Performance Index, the scores of African-American students went up 14 points and the score of Hispanic students jumped 17 points, while white students saw an increase of 10 points.
While there was an increase in schools that met the state target, fewer schools reached the federal Adequate Yearly Progress target.
The report showed that 52 percent of schools met the federal target, down from 67 percent in 2007.
O'Connell attributed the drop to raising the target by about 11 percent this year for the percentage of students expected to score at the "proficient" level.
The state and federal indexes are based on different assessments and report progress in different ways, O'Connell said.
The state's index measures how schools improve and gives more points for moving students up from the lowest performance levels, while the federal model focuses only on whether or not students are scoring at the "proficient" level on state assessments, O'Connell said.
The San Francisco Unified School District announced Thursday that it exceeded its state growth target but did not reach the federal target.
"While NCLB (No Child Left Behind) sets out unrealistic growth standards without the necessary resources to meet them, our continued Program Improvement status reinforces the urgency we feel as a community to address the disparities between our high-performing students and schools and our lowest-performing students and schools," San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Carlos Garcia said in a statement.
Schools that fail to make Adequate Yearly Progress two consecutive years are subject to Program Improvement, a five-year timeline of intervention activities.
More than 250 schools in California were identified for Program Improvement this year, while 116 schools managed to exit the program after meeting federal standards for two consecutive years.
(© CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Bay City News contributed to this report.)
