S.F. students nearly making grade

The San Francisco Unified School District as a whole scored 772 out of the possible 1,000 points in results that were released Thursday. That score, which is based on the students’ collective performance, is the highest the district has ever achieved.

In 2002, the first year the state began tracking district averages, SFUSD scored 683. After a dip in 2003, there has been a steady improvement, with the district reaching a 764 score in 2007.

The API scores are a way to measure the academic performance and growth of schools, but they are also used by parents as a way to determine which learning facility they want their kids to attend.

In San Francisco, where school assignments are not based solely on the neighborhood in which the child lives, the API scores can be a way for parents to pick which schools they want as their top choices in the lottery system, which begins months before the school year starts.

The improvement in scores by the district is significant because of the hurdles it faces, including funding cuts. The hit to education funding, which is a statewide problem, could affect future progress, state officials said.

“If schools and districts are forced to take a debilitating hit, the progress we’ve made for the last seven years is likely to be completely derailed,” state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell said Thursday.

Along with funding issues, the school district must also meet the needs of an urban school population that includes English-language learners and others who consistently score lower on the tests, according to Robert Maass, district supervisor for standardized testing.

Those challenges are felt by schools across California.

“Seventy percent of schools are made up of African-Americans and Hispanic students,” O’Connell said. “And these students continue to lag behind peers.”

A school population that’s largely white and Asian, however, can help with the overall scores for the location.

For instance, at Robert Louis Stevenson Elementary School in the Sunset district, where there is such a demographic of students, test scores have reached the state target of 800 for the past 10 years. In 2008, the school reached a base API of 912.

The district had just under half its schools at or above the 800 target in 2008. Statewide, around 87 percent of schools scored at or above 800.

Along with the targets, there’s certain progress that schools are expected to achieve. Failure to increase their scores to the proper levels means they could face sanctions, such as loss of local control and curriculum, and staff overhaul.

The API basics

Meaning behind the numbers.

 

• The Academic Performance Index, or API, is used by the state of California to measure student achievement. The scores set goals for how much a school should improve during the school year.
• Rankings are calculated per school based on students’ collective performance on tests in English, math, history and science. Schools can score as low as 200 and as high as 1,000. The state’s target for all schools is 800.
• Results are released twice a year. Spring results set the base standard from which schools measure how well they are improving test scores. API scores that measure growth scores are released in the fall.
   

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Source: California Department of Education