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STAR just one piece of academic skyline
by Carly Mayberry
Redondo Beach Unified School District Stanford Achievement TestNational Percentiles |
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| Grade | Reading | Language | Math | Spelling | Science | Social Science | ||||||
| 2000 | 2001 | 2000 | 2001 | 2000 | 2001 | 2000 | 2001 | 2000 | 2001 | 2000 | 2001 | |
| 2 | 69 | 72 | 78 | 78 | 80 | 82 | 69 | 67 | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| 3 | 66 | 71 | 70 | 78 | 74 | 82 | 60 | 69 | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| 4 | 65 | 68 | 69 | 71 | 71 | 74 | 63 | 67 | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| 5 | 65 | 65 | 70 | 72 | 74 | 76 | 60 | 61 | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| 6 | 57 | 65 | 61 | 69 | 73 | 80 | 56 | 64 | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| 7 | 61 | 60 | 64 | 66 | 71 | 73 | 58 | 58 | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| 8 | 60 | 61 | 61 | 65 | 68 | 66 | 47 | 50 | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| 9 | 50 | 42 | 61 | 64 | 66 | 69 | n/a | n/a | 57 | 53 | 51 | 50 |
| 10 | 43 | 40 | 53 | 56 | 61 | 55 | n/a | n/a | 58 | 54 | 49 | 46 |
| 11 | 35 | 43 | 50 | 56 | 51 | 55 | n/a | n/a | 49 | 53 | 56 | 63 |
The Redondo Beach Unified School District doesn’t mind the look of their educational landscape now that the dust has settled from the recently released STAR results.
"According to what we see we hope to duplicate what we’re doing right and improve upon what we need to improve upon," Testing Director and Public Information Officer Jerry Klein said.
All RBUSD students in grades 2-11 were administered the SAT 9, the nationally normed portion of the test that is used to measure each student’s achievement. Students were also given the California Standards Test, which is aligned to state adopted standards in reading, writing, mathematics, history-social science and science. In addition, this year students in grades 4 and 7 were required to write an essay.
What the RBUSD seems to be doing right is achieving a consistent level of improvement across the board. In most every category, students ranked on average a couple points higher than last year's percentile.
What’s lacking is the increase in that level of improvement.
When analyzing each particular school in the district, Klein didn’t point to any individual school as a standout when it came to this year’s results. He reiterated the district’s philosophy of looking at patterns of change.
"For instance, this year Washington Elementary didn’t improve as much as last year, but last year they improved a great deal," Klein said. "They were one of the most improved schools last year."
Klein also emphasized his district’s philosophy of using STAR results as just one component of overall academic performance.
"Again I want to strongly emphasize that the STAR program is just one measure," Klein said. "We have all different kinds of data to analyze.
"In the RBUSD, we use multiple measures in assessing student achievement. We do analyze the STAR test results but we also look at report card grades, writing portfolios, teacher tests, and a plethora of student work. Now that we have four years of results from the Stanford 9, we can continue to use this data with other achievement information to see if our efforts to strengthen curriculum and instruction are having an impact. Generally we are improving with each school year."
Klein said that now administrators are preparing to focus on the upcoming results of the CAHSEE (California High School Exit Examination) which will be released on Sept. 14.
"We’re now waiting for the exit exam results which will be the next piece of the puzzle," Klein said.