Credit: Louis Freedberg/EdSource Today

Before the pandemic, students work in a Santa Ana Unified classroom in a manner that would be unimaginable today.

Credit: Louis Freedberg/EdSource Today

Earlier the pandemic, students work in a Santa Ana Unified classroom in a way that would be unimaginable today.

As educators across the state examine the results of the Smarter Balanced assessments that millions of students took last leap, officials in several schoolhouse districts that EdSource is tracking say they desire to avoid overreacting to the scores and that they want to take more fourth dimension to review the results earlier significantly adjusting what they are already doing.

"We're not going to stop all action and shut everything downward and recalibrate right at present, given that nosotros're coming into our tertiary calendar week of school," said Fresno Unified Superintendent Michael Hanson later the land released the scores Sept. 9. "I experience good near some bright spots. But, candidly, I don't know what they hateful and why. It will have a few years to iron out."

Commune leaders said the Smarter Balanced scores set an important baseline to assess hereafter bookish growth. Merely several said they are too focusing on improving functioning in other areas and are all the same waiting for more detailed results that could requite them a ameliorate idea of specific content areas in which students excelled or fell short. In general, EdSource interviews suggest the test results have even so to inform education in a systematic way.

The Smarter Balanced examination scores are amongst more than ii dozen items the land will employ to assess schoolhouse success, including school climate, attendance and graduation rates, and reducing suspensions and expulsions.

"It's i of 30 different measures nosotros're using, from attendance to intermission rates," said Elk Grove Unified superintendent Chris Hoffman. "In that location's a whole range of measures that we think are important in determining kids beingness successful."

The responses reflect the land's new schoolhouse local command and accountability reforms promoted by Gov. Brown and enacted by the state Legislature, which downplay the importance of test results alone and place a priority on a far more comprehensive set of measures of school and student functioning.

Fresno Unified and Elk Grove Unified are amongst the 6 districts EdSource is post-obit as they implement the Common Core standards. The others are Garden Grove Unified, Santa Ana Unified, Visalia Unified and San Jose Unified. As well in the sample are the Aspire Public Schools, with 35 charter schools around the state.

Rather than scores being used principally to rank and rebuke schools, teachers and districts – which was a characteristic of the No Kid Left Behind era of reforms – officials are hoping that the new scores volition actually help meliorate educatee operation.

Jason Willis, San Jose Unified'south assistant superintendent for community date and accountability, said that his district wants to "utilize the recent results as an additional tool to help our students. The opportunity Smarter Balanced creates is merely one more information bespeak in a set of data for us to be able to learn and understand as we work toward the outcomes that nosotros want, for all of our students to be successful."

A frustration expressed past officials in some districts is that they received scores later than expected, and what they received was much less specific than they had hoped for. That has made it more than hard to suit their instruction strategies or other interventions for private students based on their exam operation.

"1 of the challenges has been wanting to get more detailed data on the results, which nosotros don't have at present," said Garden Grove Unified Superintendent Gabriela Mafi. "I gauge information technology's useful every bit function of the state's accountability system, only teachers are used to much more than discrete content cluster level information, where they can look particularly at vocabulary, word analysis, and they can also run into the scope of the things that were tested."

Whereas districts received particulars about what was tested under the previous California Standards Tests, she said they have only been given very general information about what was assessed on the new California Assessment of Student Operation and Progress, known as CAASPP.

"And then, within 'reading,' we have no breakdown of which parts of reading are better or worse," Mafi said, adding that CAASPP results are "not specific enough to guide instruction in any fashion."

Another challenge, Mafi said, was that students could choose multiple correct answers on some Smarter Counterbalanced test items. "We don't know how well kids did on those types of questions because we don't take that fine-grain information," Mafi said.

A further obstacle is that teachers practice not accept direct admission to their pupil'southward results, as the state is still developing an Online Reporting Arrangement that will allow that.

Before adapting what they are currently doing, some officials also want to await at how or why students in like districts did better on the tests, and possibly consider adopting practices implemented elsewhere.

"There is a lot of sharing that'due south happening between school districts of similar size and pupil demographics," Willis said. "Nosotros detect value in sharing effective practices and learning."

That will involve having frank discussions almost where districts are succeeding, and where they are not, he said. "When we get into conversations with other districts, we really want to create an opportunity to be vulnerable," Willis said. "Every bit professionals, we desire to create an surroundings where people can really exist honest and open up about what'due south happening. That's the first nifty step to getting better as an institution."

One reason that district officials are finding it challenging to interpret the results is that for the first time this year, students who answered a question correctly were given more difficult calculator-generated questions to answer. If they answered incorrectly they were given easier ones.

The purpose of these "estimator adaptive" tests was to drill downward to find out more than precisely what private students knew or didn't know.

"Function of what we really take to effigy out is how detailed the information is that we'll receive compared to what we used to get with the California Standards Test (administered to students until 2013) to dig down to specific items and details within the tests," Elk Grove'south Hoffman said.

He said the scores provide useful data – particularly to see how his district compares with others – but, "information technology'south non something we're using on a day-to-day basis in intervening with kids."

Among the 6 districts beingness tracked past EdSource, student functioning on the tests varied considerably from district to district (see tables below).

San Jose Unified had the highest pct of students – some 51 percent of test takers – who met or exceeded standards on the English language arts portion of the test. About 39 percent met or exceeded standards on math.

By contrast, Santa Ana had the lowest pct of students – 25 pct – who met or exceeded the standards on the English language language arts portion of the test. Most 21 percent met or exceeded the standards on math.

Just it is worth noting that San Jose also had one of the everyman percentages of English learners (17 percent) and the lowest percent of students who qualified for complimentary and reduced-cost meals (45 per centum) among the 3rd through eighth graders and 11th graders who took the tests. Santa Ana, by dissimilarity, had the highest per centum of English language learners (4o per centum) and the highest percent of students who qualified for gratis or reduced-toll meal programs (93 percent).

In all districts, there were substantial gaps betwixt the scores of Asian-American and white students on the one hand and black and Latino students on the other. But officials said the achievement gaps underscored by the results don't come as a surprise to them, and that they all take had plans in place to address them.

One reason for the gap is that many students exercise not have access to computers or the Cyberspace in their homes, putting them at a disadvantage when it came fourth dimension for testing, said Santa Ana's Lucinda Pueblos, an assistant superintendent for school performance and culture.

Santa Ana plans to go on adding technology to reach a wider range of students and is using Local Command Funding Formula dollars to add more student intervention programs, teacher training and other services to aid more than students succeed, Pueblos said.

Some districts have responded to the test scores with minor measures to target resources at schools that demand the most assist. San Jose, for example, is trying to concentrate instructional coaches – teachers who have expertise in an bookish discipline or working with special populations like English learners – in schools where students received the everyman scores.

"We have through the Local Control Funding Formula more resources on those campuses with higher percentages of low-income students, English learners and foster youth," Willis said. The goal is to ensure "we're providing quality opportunities for every one of our students to exist college and career prepare."

Similarly, Visalia Unified volition evaluate its Local Control and Accountability Programme goals and reallocate resources side by side year based partially on the test results, said Superintendent Craig Wheaton.

"This gives us information that we can mine and find the nuggets and change our practices or reinforce our practices," he said.  Exam results show that in detail, English learners need the most help, and math is a subject where more students are lagging. "I remember it will assist inform and directly our goals as nosotros move forward," he said.

Aspire'south charter schoolhouse network is looking at campuses where students performed at the highest proficiency levels on the Smarter Balanced tests in order to mayhap replicate successful programs at its other schools.

"We plan to do regression analysis to place which schools outperformed what would be predicted – based on numbers of students on free and reduced lunches and English learners – to wait at those schools chirapsia the odds," said Elise Darwish, Aspire's primary academic officer. "We're doing a lot of dissection work."

Even as they look closely at this twelvemonth'due south results, Fresno's Hanson said his district will avoid "teaching to the test" when students set to take the Smarter Balanced assessments again. "You lot're not going to see bumper stickers in Fresno that say, 'Give it your all-time for Smarter Balanced next leap,'" he said. "It'south important, but it'south not a driving factor."

Instead, Hanson said his district is spending a lot of its resource on efforts such as improving school climate and field trips to a science military camp, museums, national parks and other earth-form destinations such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium to provide students with the same kinds of life experiences those in more affluent areas receive. The district has also purchased musical instruments, is offering a wider diversity of clubs and programs such as "History Day," has adopted new math materials, is providing curriculum preparation to teachers and administrators, and has lengthened the schoolhouse day at several campuses.

Some districts are looking to the state to provide further guidance on how to use the examination results to inform instruction. To that end, they programme to send teachers and other educators to workshops or "institutes" that the state is sponsoring in Oct.

"We're going to be participating in the institutes," Mafi said. "Nosotros've been proceeding with circumspection in interpreting the scores, just because comparisons to the previous organization are so challenging. We merely don't know plenty even so."

Staff writers Fermin Leal and Sarah Tully contributed to this report.

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