Only 5 Schools Making ‘Adequate Progress’ in La Mesa-Spring Valley District

Three-quarters of the schools in the La Mesa-Spring Valley district aren’t making the improvement grade, according to state Adequate Yearly Progress reports on standardized tests.

Unsatisfied with the progress, officials discussed the K-8 district’s reports for nearly two hours at Tuesday night’s school board meeting.

Schools Superintendent Brian Marshall said he was pleased overall with the district’s Academic Performance Index scores—also released recently—but wasn’t satisfied with the district’s AYP reports.

“When you dig deeper into the data and on the AYP side, the Adequate Yearly Progress side, it certainly shows that there are some areas to continue to work on,” Marshall said during the meeting at the district’s Date Avenue headquarters.

Only five of the district’s 21 schools met AYP criteria—La Mesa schools Maryland Avenue Elementary, Murray Manor Elementary and La Mesa Dale Elementary as well as Spring Valley’s La Presa Elementary and Sweetwater Springs Elementary.

In presenting the report, Karen Walker, the district's assistant superintendent for learning support, noted progress made by the 12,000-student district.

In 2007, Walker said, 50.4 percent of the district’s students were proficient or advanced in English and 53 percent were proficient or advanced in math. In 2011, 58.2 percent of the district’s students were proficient or advanced in English and 59.3 percent were proficient or advanced in math.

Each of the district’s subgroups have risen in percent proficient or advanced in the past five years, Walker said. These include African-American, Asian, Filipino, Hispanic, white, students of two or more races, low socioeconomic students, English language learner and special education students.

“Across the board, we’re making progress, just not the kind of progress that we want to make,” Walker said.

Marshall agreed the district needs to perform better.

“Everyone is growing. We’re getting 2, 3, 4 percent per subgroup per year,” Marshall said. “But it’s time to accelerate that.”

Walker speculated that the district’s slow progress could be attributed to shuffling teachers to different grade levels and different schools, as the district has had to lay off teachers the past three years.

“We keep having these adjustments, which isn’t intended as an excuse, but it is part of our life, and we’re trying to figure out how to work within that,” Walker said.

In addition, she noted that the requirements are so rigid that only five of the 42 public school districts in San Diego County met AYP criteria.

In order for a school to meet AYP criteria, Walker said a 95 percent participation rate must occur among its significant subgroups. In addition, the school has to have at least an API score of 710.

The most challenging criteria, Walker said, is meeting the percent proficient or advanced criteria—67.6 percent of students must be proficient or advanced in English and 68.5 percent of students must be proficient or advanced in math.

To make better progress, the district has already carried out fidelity teaching, Marshall said, which consists of consistent, core curriculum across all grade levels.

However, Marshall said not all teachers are consistently adhering to the district’s instructional priorities, which are professional learning communities and data analysis, student engagement, nonfiction writing, English language learners and special education.

Marshall said execution of these focus areas is key to achieving better AYP reports.

“We do great stuff,” Marshall said. “Our teachers are working hard, but we need to see that great stuff consistently across the board, each and every day, with every child.”