Two Walnut Creek School Districts Land on Feds' 'Improvement' List

Sorry. School test score stories go AWOL with acronyms. There's a short glossary of acronyms at the bottom of this article. 

The state on Wednesday strained its computer servers by releasing a raft of scores measuring academic achievement and progress for schools. 

When the cyberdust had settled, the huge Mount Diablo district and Walnut Creek School District (five elementary schools and one intermediate school) found themselves slotted in "Year 1" of "Program Improvement." 

That designation means that the federal government judges those groups of schools collectively as not meeting "Adequate Yearly Progress" in improving scores, as measured in the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Schools in Program Improvement are subject to a five-year timeline of intervention activities — the feds advising school administrators on reform steps.

For the 2011-12 year, California saw 913 newly identified schools identified for PI. Eighty-five schools exited from PI after making AYP for two consecutive years, with a total of 3,892 schools in PI status, according to a news release from state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson.

The state released the next round of measurements of AYP as well as the state's accounting of Academic Performance Index (API). 

Across the state, 49 percent of California schools exceeded or met their API target. That is a record.

API scores showed continued improvement across the board, with statewide growth of 11 points, propelled by a 14-point gain among English learners and Hispanic students and a 10-point gain among African American students. Asian and white students posted gains of 8 and 7 points.

But the API scores tend to go down at the higher grade levels.

Fifty-five percent of elementary schools, 43 percent of middle schools and 28 percent of high schools met or surpassed the state API target of 800.

“I applaud the hard work our students, teachers, parents, school employees and administrators are doing to improve — even in the face of severe cuts to school funding,” said Torlakson. “At school after school, and among every significant ethnic group, California’s students are performing better than ever. The failure here is in our politics, not our public schools.”

More about the state's index under the subhead API farther down in this article.

APR

The APR marks for Contra Costa County are here. APRs are a compilation of state and federal standardized test results, and are used by educators to gauge how well schools are performing academically.

Those figures include the state’s API and the federal AYP and Program Improvement designations.

If a district’s English-learners subgroup fails to meet standards in English, for example, the district fails as a whole, despite having all other subgroups testing at proficiency. The frustration of this provision is often cited by educators as a statistical failure of No Child Left Behind — particularly California's education czar, Torlakson.

MDUSD landed on the PI list. Year 1. It means district staff will have to fill out a forms demonstrating to the federal government the district's plan for reaching AYP to improve achievement.

Wednesday AYP report cited the MDUSD collectively for failure to make sufficient progress in ELA and math scores, but gave the district credit for its progress in API measurement and graduation rates. 

The Walnut Creek high school in the district, Northgate, was listed with adequate progress in all those components — as was Las Lomas High (which is in the Acalanes Union district).

Wednesday's announcement also put WCSD on the PI list. Collectively, the stats faulted the district for inadequate progress in math, but noted sufficient progress in ELA and API. 

Indian Valley, Parkmead and Walnut Heights elementary schools had sufficient progress in all components.

Buena Vista failed to make the mark in math, according to the feds. Murwood failed to hit the mark in ELA and math.

It was the same story at Walnut Creek Intermediate — missing the progress mark in ELA and math 

API

The API marks for Contra Costa County are here.

In API, the state wants schools to strive for an 800 score. 

In the MDUSD district as a whole, the score crept up from 784 to 786.

Other schools had declines (but note that they started at a higher level): Northgate High from 865 to 855; WCSD's five elementary schools from 907 to 905; Walnut Creek Intermediate from 904 to 900.

scored a 777, a slight improvement from last year's score of 776, and below schools in the state of similar demographics. 

 Glossary:

• API -- Academic Performance Index
• APR — Accountability Progress Reporting
• AYP  —  Adequate Yearly Progress
• ELA  — English language arts
• MDUSD — Mount Diablo Unified School District
• PI — Program Improvement
• WCSD — Walnut Creek School District