Murrieta Valley USD Named Top 10 By California Reading Coalition

MURRIETA, CA — The California Reading Coalition, a group of educators, advocates, researchers, and policymakers who work to improve reading for students statewide, has named the Murrieta Valley Unified School District as a top 10 school district in its annual report card.

The report card ranks districts based on their effectiveness in teaching reading by 3rd grade.

"Third-grade reading achievement is vital to long-term student success," according to the coalition. "Low early reading achievement is highly correlated with low high-school grades, failure to graduate, and likelihood of going to prison."

Districts were ranked by the percent of socio-economically disadvantaged Hispanic/Latino students who "meet or exceed" grade level for the CAASPP 3rd grade English Language Arts test. The rankings included only districts with 100 or more socio-economically disadvantaged Latinx 3rd graders.

Out of 287 districts across California, MVUSD ranked 10th best. Half of the MVUSD students within the demographic met or exceeded their grade level in reading, according to the report card. The 287 districts represent 72 percent of all enrolled California students, the coalition reported.

"District comparisons must focus on specific sub-groups — an "apples to apples" comparison," according to the coalition. "Not only do soci0-economically disadvantaged Latinx students make up 43 percent of California K-12 enrollment they are also less likely to have outside learning supports than families with more resources, higher educational attainment, and more English literacy.

"Results for these students, therefore, help us see how effectively schools teach reading, separate from the contribution from parents and outside resources," according to the coalition. "We believe that better results for these students almost certainly mean better reading instruction for all."

Other districts in the top 10 were located in Fresno, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. The worst performing districts were located in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Sonoma and Ventura counties.

Temecula Valley Unified School District was ranked 20th, and the Lake Elsinore Unified School District 196th.

See the full report card here.