Most students of 23 mainstream public schools administering the new state standards test in San Benito County did not meet standards but the county also had some high-performing standouts.
Three schools—the Accelerated Achievement Academy, Southside School and Hollister Prep School—had more students meet the standards in math than not reach them, a statistic that broke the county trend of low performance. Seven schools—Hollister Prep School, the AAA, Southside, Anzar, Spring Grove, Aromas and the Hollister Dual Language Academy—could boast of the same achievement level in English.
The new California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress test—taken by students in grades three through eight and by sophomores in high school—tests the state’s new standards for math and literacy referred to as Common Core.
“I think none of us really knew what to expect. It’s quite a change from the old California Standards Test—the CST—and it’s a tremendous departure in terms of how students take the test,” said Gary McIntire, the superintendent of the Hollister School District. “We don’t shrink from the scores. They are where we begin and we see this as our baseline.”
When the Free Lance studied the results of the CAASPP test on a district-by-district basis in September, the newspaper found just two of 11 districts in the county had a higher percentage of students achieving standards than not meeting them in math or English. But the performance of larger districts such as the Hollister School District—which has 10 schools—diverged at times from that of individual sites.
Most of the Hollister School District’s students did not meet standards in math or English, but the district’s Accelerated Achievement Academy—where students have to do an application plus share old report cards and a writing sample to qualify—made the top of the list for performers in the county for math with 61 percent of students meeting standards in the subject.
The academy also ranked 20th in the state out of 2,482 middle schools, according to statistics from schooldigger.com.
Following the academy’s star performance were Southside School, where 58 percent of students met standards, and Hollister Prep School, where 53 percent of students met standards.
These three schools were a sharp contrast to the nine sites in the county where 80 percent or more of the tested students did not meet the state standards.
Academy Principal Joe Rivas attributed the success to classes that focus on justifying answers, naturally articulate students and project-based learning. The academy had 39.8 percent of its students eligible for free and reduced-price meals, the principal said.
“The students and parents are motivated in terms of what they do,” the principal said.
The new CAASPP test replaces Standardized Testing And Reporting (STAR) exams—a multiple choice, paper-based standardized test—and caused technology growing pains in many districts because it was the first state assessment taken mostly on computers. The performances on this test are not comparable to the former student assessment.
The Hollister Prep School—which is part of the Hollister Prep District but uses Hollister School District space for its campus—brought home the top performance in English for the county with 81 percent of tested pupils meeting the state standards. Only third graders took the test last year, but the growing charter school’s first class of fourth graders will also take the assessment this year.
Other local standouts in English included the Accelerated Achievement Academy with 78 percent of the tested students meeting standards, Southside School with 72 percent of pupils meeting standards, and Anzar High School with 67 percent meeting the state test standards.
Samantha Hanlon, the principal of Hollister Prep, credited it to regular teacher coaching, data meetings to review student performance, work in small groups in the classroom and built-in time for intervention. In language arts classes, students work in groups of seven or eight and cycle through stations with a teacher, a paraprofessional, independent work and technology-based reading programs, she said. The school has 81 percent of its students qualifying for free and reduced-price meals and 62 percent of its youth classified as English language learners, the principal explained by email.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, two schools in the county had more than 80 percent of their students failing to meet the standards in English, including Calaveras and R.O. Hardin.
Calaveras—the Hollister School District’s priority school and a notoriously poor performer on the former tests—has a high number of English learners and economically disadvantaged students, McIntire said. At Calaveras, 66 percent of the students—or two-thirds of the school—are English Language learners, the superintendent said.
“That priority school designation has come with the investment of a number of resources,” he said.
R.O. Hardin is another example of a school where students have “tremendous learning challenges” and those learning English might have a “real disadvantage” when taking a test in English, McIntire said.
At Calaveras, 86 percent of students didn’t meet standards in math or English. The designation of the campus as a priority school doesn’t mean the district expected the school to resolve “those kind of challenges” the first year, the superintendent explained. The student results from the assessment fit one of four categories: standard not met, standard nearly met, standard met and standard exceeded.
“Between the ‘doesn’t meet standard’ and the ‘meets standard’ are the ‘nearly met’ groups,” McIntire said. “A lot of students are very nearly meeting standards.”
For example, at Ladd Lane Elementary School, 27 percent of the tested students—which translates to about one out of four youth—are nearing the standards in English, McIntire said. In math at the same school, 31 percent—or roughly one out of three youth—are approaching the standards, the superintendent said.
Panoche Elementary and Jefferson School, which belong to rural, single-school districts in southern San Benito County, showed populations of 10 or fewer students with valid test scores, leading CAASPP to omit the data from Internet test result searches to protect student privacy, according to the organization’s website.
To look up your local school’s performance on the new test, go to: caaspp.cde.ca.gov/sb2015/Search.
