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California K-12 students showed moderate academic progress last year, with some bright spots, but otherwise remained flat after years of post-pandemic improvements, according to a new California school dashboard released today.
Chronic truancy, discipline rates and progress among English learners remained largely unchanged, with slight improvements. Academic performance improvedbut still lags behind pre-pandemic levels.
The dashboard is a user-friendly, color-coded guide for the public to understand schools’ performance. Schools get credit for their students’ results, but also for how much progress they’ve made – a measure that some said it could be misleading. The dashboard assigns colors to reflect schools’ performance, with blue being the best and red triggering state interventions. Last year was the first year that all categories earned a yellow or green, indicating improvement.
“Seeing modest improvements on every scoreboard indicator should encourage us to deepen our investment in every child’s progress,” said state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. “We must not rest until all students’ results represent their brilliance and potential.”
College and career readiness is a bright spot
College and career readiness was a focus with a record number of students graduating last year prepared for college and the job market.
Nearly 52 percent of last year’s graduating class completed the requirements to attend a California public university or complete a 2- to 4-year career. The number was up 3.1 percent from the previous year, bringing the total to the highest level since the state introduced the dashboard nearly a decade ago.
California has encouraged career pathways in high schools for years, providing money and guidance for schools to train students in health care, engineering, environmental science, agriculture and other careers. Students typically take a series of career-themed courses related to their academic work, often combined with extracurricular internships or classes at community colleges.
Last year, nearly 27% of students graduated with a career, which is about 1 percentage point higher than the previous year.
College readiness also improved, but that was in part because the state now includes completion of advanced placement courses among its measurements. Last year, 55% of students took at least one AP class.
Record high completion rate
The completion rate also reached its highest level of 88% since the introduction of the Dashboard in 2017, when the rate was around 83%.
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"Today's scoreboard results show that California continues to make important strides in its post-pandemic recovery — getting more students back into the classroom, graduating more students, and preparing more students for college and careers," California State Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond said in a statement.
Slight improvement in absenteeism
But other dashboard measurements were weak. Chronic absenteeism, for example, which jumped to 30% during the pandemic, fell by just 1 percentage point last year. After several years of steep decline, the rate has almost stalled at just over 19%. Before the pandemic, about 11% of students were chronically absent, meaning they missed 10% or more of the school year.
The Los Angeles wildfires and an increase in immigrant incursions are among the reasons for the slowdown in attendance, said Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, a research and policy organization. Thousands of students missed school because of the fires, while others stayed away due to fears of deportation.
"I'm not surprised," Chang said. "It's a sign that we need a statewide game plan to deal with attendance. I also think it's going to take persistence over time."
Schools that prioritize personal relationships with families tend to have better attendance, she said. Attendance also improved in schools that identified individual students who needed help getting to school each day and then provided that help.
English learner progress has also stagnated, with only 46.4% of students making progress towards English proficiency. The number is up less than 1% from last year.
Major improvements in Dinuba
Dinuba Unified, a rural district southeast of Fresno, was among the state's bright spots. The 6,000-student district, where one-third of students are English language learners and more than 85 percent are low-income, saw overall improvements last year. English test scores jumped more than 10 percentage points, math scores jumped nearly 6 percentage points, and the graduation rate exceeded 95%.
District administrators credited the success to low staff turnover and grant funding that allows teachers ample time to prepare lesson plans, collaborate and understand the new curriculum, especially in math. The newly constructed high school also has popular career paths, including construction management and transportation, that entice students to stay in school and graduate, said Lisa Benslay, the district's intervention director.
"Our mission is to end generational poverty through education," Bensley said. "People have really bought into it. They see the need and feel the moral conviction."
Funding expires
In the state, student scores dipped during the pandemic when most schools closed for face-to-face instruction, but have rebounded significantly in the past few years. State and federal governments have poured billions into programs to help students recover, such as tutoring, after-school and summer programs, mental health counseling and incentives designed to boost attendance.
But that money largely ran out last year, and schools had to cut many of those programs. Some also receive less money from the state because of declining enrollment.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.