The data for this article comes from the California Department of Education and is part of the high school exit exam test results released last week. But, when we started looking at the data, we found something even more interesting.
Most readers of OC180NEWS already know the students at Los Alamitos High School generally do pretty well when it comes to the state’s high school exit exam. This year was no exception. Since reporting that the new test results put Los Al at or near the top of county and state rankings isn’t really much news, instead, we prefer to compare current results with previous years’ numbers.
Just as the state’s standardized test results fell last year at Los Alamitos High School (see related article below), so to were the high school exit exam results slightly lower. But, the exit exam results declined by only one percentage point, in only one of two subjects. The standardized results fell more.
There are two parts to the high school exit exam – math and English. Last year, 97% of the tenth graders passed the English portion, unchanged from the previous year.
Math is where scores drop slightly. For the school year ending in June 2010, 98% of the tenth graders passed the test. That’s the same passing percentage as in the 2009 school year. Last year, 97% passed.
When the state reports this data, they also divide results into a few different categories, such as economically disadvantaged and not disadvantaged. This is where the most interesting part of the story comes in.
In the 2010 school year, there were only 11 students taking the math and English portions of the test who were identified as “economically disadvantaged.” In the 2011 school year, that number increased seven fold for math and even more for English. In 2011, 72 “economically disadvantaged” students took the math test. In the same year, a total of 82 “economically disadvantaged” took the English test.
In 2010, only 1.4% of the students taking the test were “economically disadvantaged.” In 2011, for math, it was 9.3%. For English, the “economically disadvantaged” were 9.4% of test takers in 2011. The state defines “economically disadvantaged as”The pupil participates in the free or reduced price lunch program.”
This article is based on data from the California Department of Education for tenth graders who took the high school exit exam at any time during the school year ending in June 2011.
The Los Alamitos Unified School District serves nearly 10,000 students in Seal Beach, Rossmoor, and Los Alamitos. The district includes Los Alamitos High School, a full service high school, Laurel High School, a continuation high school, McAuliffe Middle School, Oak Middle School, and six elementary schools. Mrs. Karen Russell is the current President of the Board of Education. Dr. Sherry Kropp is the Superintendant of the Los Alamitos Unified School 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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