California released on Friday its annual performance ratings of school districts and charters, and for San Diego County, they show improvements in chronic absenteeism since last year but little change in other areas such as high school graduation and test scores.
The ratings are “a good opportunity for parents to get a sense of a variety of measures of student performance within their schools,” said Steven Green, senior director of the Data and Impact Center of Excellence at the San Diego County Office of Education. “It’s one view of what the student experience is like.”
The ratings are part of the California School Dashboard, which became the state’s main accountability measure of schools starting in 2017. You can view all the ratings at caschooldashboard.org.
Green cautioned that the ratings shouldn’t be used to make singular judgments about schools or districts, many aspects of which they don’t measure. Families using the ratings to make comparisons should also consider differences in school and district demographics, size, geography and more, he added.
Along with the dashboard, on Friday the state also released new high school graduation and discipline data, both of which factor into the ratings.
San Diego County’s average graduation rate remained virtually unchanged from last year, at about 85 percent, which is below the statewide average. The county’s rate is still 3 percentage points higher than it was pre-pandemic.
Meanwhile 3 percent of San Diego County students were suspended for at least one day last school year, which is not much different from last year’s rate or the pre-pandemic rate.
The dashboard rates schools and districts in seven different areas:
- Standardized test scores in English language arts
- Standardized test scores in math
- Suspension rate
- Chronic absenteeism rate for K-8 students, or the percentage who were absent at least 10 percent of school days
- High school graduation rate
- English learner progress, or the percentage of students learning English as a second language who either made progress or maintained high performance from last year on the state’s language proficiency test
- College/career preparedness, or the percentage of high school graduates who met at least one of several metrics, which include passing multiple Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams, completing a career technical education pathway, completing a pre-apprenticeship or government job program, passing college credit courses and passing state standardized tests in English and math
Most of the ratings are assigned as colors, with blue indicating the highest performance, followed by green, yellow and orange, with red the lowest.
The color ratings take into account both performance this year and whether it improved, worsened or remained unchanged from last year.
Therefore, the color ratings can hold different meanings. For example, one school might be rated yellow because it improved greatly from last year but still has poor performance, another might have shown average performance that did not change from last year, and a third might have performed well last year but worsened significantly since.
Instead of colors, the area of college and career preparedness uses ratings of very high, high, medium, low and very low because there is no previous-year data to compare past performance.
As an example, here’s a breakdown of how San Diego Unified, the county’s largest district, was rated in this year’s dashboard:
- It received a yellow for its English language arts test scores because its students, on average, scored 7 points above standard, which is considered medium performance and is about the same as last year.
- It received a green for its math test scores because its students, on average, scored 24 points below standard, which is considered medium performance. However, that score is a 6-point improvement from last year.
- It received a green for its suspension rate of 2.5 percent, which is considered low and is about the same as last year.
- It received a yellow for chronic absenteeism rate of 27 percent, which is considered very high. However, that rate is still a significant improvement from the district’s rate last year of 37 percent.
- It received a yellow for its high school graduation rate of 90 percent, which is considered medium performance and is about the same as last year.
- It received a yellow for its English learner progress, because half of students who took an English proficiency test either made progress or continued to be high-performing compared to last year. That rate is also considered medium performance and is about the same as last year.
- San Diego Unified received a high rating for preparing students for college or career. Overall, 60 percent of San Diego Unified high school seniors qualified as prepared this year. About 23 percent of seniors were considered unprepared, and 17 percent were deemed “approaching” prepared.
Out of all the metrics measured, Green said the most concerning for the county is chronic absenteeism, which still remains significantly above pre-pandemic levels. About 23 percent of county public school students were chronically absent last school year, up from 11 percent pre-COVID.
Other metrics, such as the graduation rate and test scores, generally did not change much from last year, Green said.
The dashboard provides a set of overall ratings for each school and district. Families who want to dig even further into the data can also find ratings for up to 13 student groups within each school and district. Those include racial groups and historically disadvantaged groups such as students with disabilities and low-income students.
Districts, charter schools and county education offices found to be low-performing in certain areas are eligible for what’s called differentiated assistance, or support in improving. For example, districts and charters are eligible for support if they have at least one student group that meets certain criteria of low performance in at least two of the rating areas.
This year 22 local school districts and 18 charters, plus the county education office, qualified. They include:
- Districts: Alpine, Borrego Springs, Cajon Valley, Escondido Elementary, Fallbrook Elementary, Fallbrook High, Grossmont, Julian Elementary, Lakeside, La Mesa-Spring Valley, Lemon Grove, Mountain Empire, Ramona, San Diego Unified, San Ysidro, Sweetwater, Vallecitos, Vista, Carlsbad, Oceanside, Warner, Valley Center-Pauma Unified
- Charters: SIATech, King-Chavez Preparatory Academy, King-Chavez Community High, Leonardo da Vinci Health Sciences, Gompers Preparatory Academy, Howard Gardner Community, Motivated Youth Academy, Ingenuity, San Diego Workforce Innovation High, Diego Valley East, Urban Discovery Academy, Bostonia Global, Guajome Park Academy, Charter School of San Diego, Preuss School UCSD, Pacific View, MAAC Community, Feaster
