Schools

Local English Test Scores Beat State Average by 15 Points

Written by Adam Townsend

Saddleback Valley Unified students scored about 15 points higher in English than the state average, according to state test results released Thursday.

At Saddleback, 72.5 percent of tested students scored at or above proficiency in English for grades 2 through 11. Statewide, 56.4 percent met those standards in the 2013 school year. Countywide, students hit 64.6 percent proficiency in 2013.

The percentage of students deemed “proficient or advanced” dropped slightly in English at Saddleback Valley Unified in the 2013 school year. Math scores rose slightly year over year for third-, fourth- and sixth-grade students.

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A district representative said she would respond to the new data Monday.

Districtwide, statewide and countywide, there was actually very little change in the percentage of students deemed proficient or advanced in English, math, history and science. Most of the statistics show a dip of less than one percent.

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Al Mijares, Superintendent of the Orange County Department of Education, said he was pleased with this year’s aggregate numbers. OC students outshine those in Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, he said.

“When you look at the largest counties in California, we continue to out-score those counties, and we have the same demographic challenges they do,” Mijares said. “You can’t say all our kids come from English-speaking homes with strong middle-class families.”

Mijares said the slight dips in percentages shouldn’t cause undue alarm.

“You’re always looking for ways to improve -- that’s an ongoing quest,” Mijares said. “We saw a little bit of a dip in the elementary grades, so we’ll have to study that and make sure it’s a statistical aberration, not a trend.”

Mijares also commended OC teachers’ “professionalism and competence” for helping students to maintain most of the testing gains from over the past decade despite layoffs and budget cuts.

The State Standards

Students in California from second through 11th grades take a battery of tests each year established by California’s 1999 Public Schools Accountability Act. The California Department of Education measures student achievement through Standardized Testing and Reporting, or STAR results, which it releases in bulk to the public and schools throughout the state every summer.

According to the state education department, not every kid takes the whole battery of tests, depending on grade level—for instance, a second grader wouldn’t take high school biology just as a high schooler wouldn’t take second-grade math. There are a couple alternate and modified tests taken by kids with disabilities, and one in Spanish for kids who have either been in the country for less than 12 months or received instruction in Spanish, according to the department of education website.

But the majority of schoolchildren throughout the state take a test called the California Standards Test, which tests English language arts; history and social science; mathematics; and science.

Numbers Countywide

The number of Orange County students deemed advanced or proficient in English and language arts dropped a percentage point from 65.6 percent in 2012 to 64.6 percent in 2013.

Orange County’s proficient and advanced history and social sciences students in 2012 made up 61.1 percent of those tested as opposed to 60.8 percent in 2013.

Math scores dropped slightly as well. In 2012, 61.7 percent of students tested throughout the county were proficient or advanced in math, while only 60.8 percent were proficient or advanced in 2013.

OC science scores dropped in aggregate dropped by more than one percent. In 2012, 64.8 percent of students tested were proficient or advanced in science, while 63.3 percent of students in 2013 were proficient or advanced in science.

Numbers Statewide

In 2012, 57.2 percent of California students were deemed “proficient or advanced” in English and language arts, while only 56.4 percent met those standards in the 2013 school year.

In Math, 51.5 percent of students were advanced or proficient in 2012, but the 2013 kids shaved that number down to 51.2.

Similarly with science, 59.5 percent of 2012 students were proficient or advanced while only 59.1 percent of 2013 students showed the same aptitude.

A bright spot in the STAR report this year was that student tacked on a few tenths of a percent in their history and social science scores: the percentage of proficient or advanced students in 2012 was 48.8, which rose to 49.4 in 2013.

--Patch Editor Peter Schelden contributed to this report.


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