In results released today by the California Department of Education, the combined scores for the Los Alamitos Unified schools improved in 64.8% of the tests, were unchanged in 9.3%, and fell in 25.9%.
The 2010 California Standards Tests (CSTs) were taken last spring and are standards-based tests that measure student achievement of state content standards in English Language arts, mathematics, science, and history-social science. The tests are taken in grades 2 through 11.
Under California’s Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Program, California students attain one of five levels of performance on the CSTs for each subject tested: Advanced, Proficient, Basic, Below Basic, and Far Below Basic. The State Board of Education has established the Proficient level as the desired achievement goal for all students.
There are tons of numbers in the data released today by the state and sorting through it can be a daunting task. Not only is the amount of data unmanageable, there are many different ways to analyze it in order to come to some useful conclusions.
For one approach, we combined the percentages of Los Alamitos Unified students scoring at the Proficient and Advanced levels. Next, in our exclusive analysis, OC180NEWS summarized the changes in these totals for 2009 and 2010, and determined how many went up, how many were unchanged, and how many went down.
To complete this analysis, we looked at each test, for each grade, in each of the district’s schools. By this approach, each school stands alone and positive results in one school do not overshadow negative outcomes in another. In compiling the scores in this manner, there are a total of 108 separate data points – where one grade level for one test, in one school, equals one data point.
Of these 108 data points, 70 (64.8%) improved, 10 (9.3%) were the same as last year, and 28 (25.9%) declined from 2009. Lee Elementary provides an example of an improved score. In grade 3, in spring 2009, 68% of the students scored Proficient or Advanced on the English Language Arts test. In 2010, that score improved to 82%. Conversely, for the same test at Hopkinson Elementary, grade 2, In 2009, 87% were Proficient or Advanced. In 2010, the score went down to 84%.
The winner for the most improvement – any school, any subject, any grade – was Laurel High School, Life Sciences, grade 10. In 2009, only 20% of the students were Proficient or Advanced. In 2010, 70% scored above that benchmark – an improvement of 50 percentage points.
Not only did Laurel High achieve the best improvement, they also had the second and the third best improvements. The second best improvement award goes to Laurel High, Grade 10, Social Science, where the 2009 score of 20% increased to 60% for 2010. The third best improvement was Laurel High, grade 11, Algebra 1, where the 2009 score of 8% improved by 25 points to 33%.
At the other end of the spectrum, the largest drop in Proficient or Advanced scores was also at Laurel High. The grade 11 Biology scores fell from 60% in 2009, to 40% in 2010.
The second largest decline was Oak Middle School where the grade 7 General Math scores fell from 64% in 2009, to 47% for 2010. The third biggest drop was at Rossmoor Elementary, where the grade 4 Math score fell from 92% to 78% for 2010.
There was a tie between Weaver Elementary and Hopkinson Elementary for the 2010 test where the most students scored Proficient or Advanced. The winners were both grade 4 math, where 98% of the students hit the benchmark.
The second highest score was Rossmoor Elementary, where 97% of the grade 2 students were Proficient or Advanced in English Language Arts. This was followed by Weaver grade 3 math at 96%.
At the bottom of the barrel were the grade 10 Geometry students at Los Alamitos High School. Only 17% of those students were Proficient or Advanced in 2010. This group was followed by the grade 10 Algebra 1 students at Los Al, where 28% hit the goal. Third from the bottom were the grade 11 English Language Arts students at Laurel where 30% were Proficient or Advanced.
In comparing Los Alamitos Unified district totals to the totals for both California and Orange County, Los Al looks pretty good. For each of the tests- English Language Arts, History, Math, and Science – Orange County has a higher percentage of students scoring Proficient or Advanced than the state in total. Further, for each one of the tests, more Los Alamitos Unified District students scored Proficient or Advanced than the total for Orange County.
Not only did Los Al beat the state and County numbers, in all test categories except math, Los Al improved the outcomes at a faster rate than the county improvement rate. This is particularly impressive because the general rule is the better the score, the harder it is to improve.
Return to OC180NEWS tomorrow for our analysis of individual schools in the Los Alamitos Unified District.
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About Dolores Barr, Publisher
Dolores Barr has lived in Rossmoor since 1992 and has created this site to provide local news for the people of Los Alamitos, Seal Beach, Rossmoor, Leisure World, Sunset Beach, and Surfside, California. My husband and I have had two students graduate from the Los Alamitos Unified School District and currently our Grandson, Ricky Apodaca, grade 3 at Weaver Elementary, is actively involved in youth baseball through LAYB and youth football through FNL.
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