California Schools Still Show Educational Disparities
Feature Story by Michelle Russell - 1/17/2002
Improvement in California statewide achievement scores has slowed, an analysis of state date revealed Wednesday. California is entering its third year of a school accountability program, and administrators are finding children’s progress difficult to maintain.Although half of all California schools showed a decrease in testing scores, researchers and educational leaders have stated that a slight decline is normal, considering the giant leaps made in test scores the previous year.
The education researchers also pointed out that elementary schools with predominantly disadvantaged students have reaped the most benefits from the revamped educational standards. Although schools with a majority of disadvantaged students have profited, research has shown that these schools are finding such rapid progress harder to maintain than schools serving middle to high-income students.
Commonwealth Elementary, a school in downtown Los Angeles serving low-income students, saw its testing scores rise 18% in 2000, making huge leaps and bounds in their educational testing. However, only a 3% rise is shown for 2001.
For the last two years, Commonwealth Elementary has earned a rank of five, out of ten rankings available. These levels are used to measure school achievement on the Stanford 9, a basic skills exam.
As results were released Wednesday, the LA Times conducted an analysis of the data, using one as the lowest and ten as the highest scores. The Times study revealed continuing disparities between suburban and urban schools. In more suburban districts, the majority of schools were placed in the seventh level and above, while many schools in urban areas ranked in the lower three levels.
The new testing scores gathered over the previous two years will be used in California Governor Davis’ school accountability system. The scores will be used to form a new ranking system.
