California schools recovering from pandemic, school dashboard shows

Credit: Allison Shelley from American Education

K-12 schools in California made progress in several areas last school year, including slightly increasing graduation rates and reducing suspensions and the number of chronically absent students. School Control Panel It was published on Thursday.

The state also saw an overall increase in scores on state standardized tests in both English language arts and math, preparing more students for college and careers and having more students earn dual literacy seals.

The improvements, though incremental in some areas, are an indication that California schools are making progress in reducing learning loss and chronic absenteeism resulting from school closures at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Today’s Dashboard results show that California continues to make significant progress in its post-pandemic recovery,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the California State Board of Education. “We’re getting students back to school, preparing more of them for college and careers, and graduating more.”

The dashboard, a key part of the state’s accountability system, uses a series of colors to show whether a school or district is growing or declining in various areas, including chronic absenteeism, suspension and graduation rates; college and career readiness; development of English language learners; and state standardized test scores in math and English language arts.

Blue identifies top-performing schools and districts, followed by green, yellow, orange and red. Schools and districts are scored based on their performance for that school year and whether there has been an increase or decrease since the previous school year. According to state officials, anything below a green score indicates a need for improvement.

This year, the state added science scores from state standardized tests into the mix, but for informational purposes only. Next year, scores will be an official indicator that will help determine whether schools should receive support from the district or the state.

Fewer school districts need support

Counties with a red rating in one or more priority areas They are required to receive “differentiated assistance” from their district education offices. California Statewide Support System. Underperforming district offices, which also operate schools, receive direct support from the state.

Priority areas include: school environment (suspension rates); student attendance (graduation rate and chronic absences) and student achievement (English Student progress and math, science, and English language arts tests).

The number of districts performing poorly enough to require support from county Offices of Education decreased for the second year in a row, as California schools made progress last school year. This year, 436 districts were eligible to receive aid, compared to 466 districts last year.

According to the California Department of Education, 617 school districts have been approached for aid in 2022, largely due to high chronic absenteeism rates. However, over the past two school years, chronic absenteeism rates have decreased by 5.7% each year. Almost a third of students were chronically absent in 2021-22.

Chronic absenteeism continues to decline

Despite the decline in chronic absenteeism rates, the state still needs to make improvements to reach the 12.1% rate in 2019, before the Covid outbreak. The current chronic absenteeism rate is 18.6%.

The group most likely to be chronically absent last school year were high school students; They missed an average of 15.6 days of school. Transitional kindergarten and kindergarten students missed an average of 13.9 days, seventh- and eighth-grade students missed 12.6 days, fourth- through sixth-grade students missed 11 days, and first- through third-grade students missed 11.5 days.

Eleven of 15 school districts in El Dorado County are designated to receive differential aid from the county in 2022 due to high levels of chronic absenteeism. County Office of Education staff met with leaders from 11 districts to review data and identify root causes. Ed Manansala, El Dorado County Schools Superintendent. He said the district office provides data to districts each month to understand why groups of students and individual students are absent and moving toward chronic absenteeism.

Last year the county had three school districts on the state list for chronic absenteeism. Manansala said there was none this year.

“To me, this is proof that the statewide support system is working,” he said.

Long-term English learners added

While many districts improved their chronic absence numbers and other indicators last year, eliminating the need for support, 215 districts are on the list in part because of the performance of long-term English students, a group of students added this year. .

The performance of longtime English language learners on academic tests, graduation rates and other indicators was a primary reason schools and districts were flagged for improvement this year.

The dashboard defines long-term English language learners as students who speak a language other than English at home and have been enrolled in U.S. schools for seven years or more but have not yet achieved English proficiency. In the past, the dashboard only included data for English learners as a whole.

The inclusion of long-term English language learners in the dashboard is a result of legislation passed by advocacy organizations. pushed for several years.

“This is a tremendous step forward,” said Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together, an organization that advocates for English language learners statewide. “The needs of long-term English language learners will no longer be hidden and will be brought to the forefront for statewide accountability.”

Hernandez said it’s crucial for school districts to use new data on long-term English language learners to develop programs and train teachers specifically on how to help these students. Long-term English language learners have different needs than newly arrived immigrant students. For example, long-term English language learners often have a good command of colloquial English but have not mastered reading and writing in the language.

In addition, Hernandez said districts should also focus on helping students achieve fluency in English more quickly so they don’t become long-term English language learners in the first place.

“English learners come to school bright and ready to learn, and the system is really failing them. (If) they are learning English long-term, that’s not an indication of the students, it’s actually the system not meeting their needs,” said Hernandez.

There are six districts in El Dorado County that need assistance from the county Office of Education. Like many districts in California this year, El Dorado Union High School District made the list due to the addition of long-term English language learners to the state benchmark. Manansala and high school district superintendent Mike Kuhlman began discussions about how to increase the success of long-term English language learners.

“We have 12 TK-8 districts that feed into the high school district, so this will become a system-wide discussion,” Manansala said. “Once again, we’ll be taking a closer look at this over the next few years.”

Earn more State Seals of Biliteracy

The number of students receiving the State Seal of Biliteracy on their high school diplomas has also increased; It increased from 52,773 in 2022-23 to 64,261 in 2023-24. This may be because a new law This law, which goes into effect in 2024, gives students more ways to prove their proficiency in English as well as a second language.

In the past, advocates and administrators have said that many students, especially those learning English, do not receive the State Seal of Biliteracy even though they are bilingual because there are not enough options to prove English proficiency.

Graduation rates increased slightly

High school graduation rates in California rose 0.2% this year to 86.4%. But that was enough for the state to have the largest group of students graduating from high school since 2017, with 438,065 students, according to state officials. Of those, 227,463 met the requirements to attend the University of California or California State University.

Graduation rates have remained fairly stable over the past decade; This was primarily because many districts allowed juniors and seniors to graduate by meeting the state’s 130-unit minimum requirement during pandemic shutdowns, rather than the higher number of units most districts require.

Suspension rates are falling

Suspension rates decreased slightly last school year, falling to 3.2% from 3.5% in 2022-23.

According to the California Department of Education, the decrease in suspension rates was true for all student groups; however, there continues to be a focus on disparities in suspension rates for African-American students, foster youth, homeless students, students with disabilities, and long-term English students.

Stock Report

An equity report on the dashboard gives users a look at the progress of 14 groups of students attending California schools, including African Americans, American Indians, Asians, English language learners, Filipinos, foster youth, Hispanics, homeless, two or more races, Pacific and American students. The islanders are socioeconomically disadvantaged, long-time English language learners, students with disabilities, and white students.

This year, school districts will receive assistance to improve outcomes for long-term English language learners in 215 districts, students with disabilities in 195 districts, homeless students in 125 districts, encouraging youth in 104 districts, English language learners in 84 districts, and economically disadvantaged students in 84 districts. White students in 68 districts, white students in 30 districts, American Indian and Alaska Native students in 27 districts, students of two or more races in 19 districts, Pacific Islander students in eight districts and Asian students in one district, according to an EdSource analysis.

The number of districts needing help to improve outcomes for African American and Latino students decreased this year. Districts will receive aid to help African-American students, up from 66 districts in 2018 to 51 districts. Districts will receive aid to help Latino students, up from 44 in 2018. This number dropped to 39.

“Across California, we see that when we provide assistance to the most vulnerable in our communities, it pays off for all students,” state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said in a statement. “Our immigrant students and socioeconomically disadvantaged students show consistent improvements in school attendance and graduation rates, reflecting the dedication of both our educators and students.”