LA Unified Superintendent Michelle King said at a news conference last week that the district’s improvement over last year on the state’s standardized tests was among “the highest gains that were achieved among urban districts in California.”

But was it really?

LA Unified was fourth among the 10 largest districts in the state in overall improvement, but in nearly every individual category it was in the lower half or near the bottom — and at the bottom for English language learners. 

(A note on the math score: There is a discrepancy between what the state website shows and what LA Unified reported. Officially, LA Unified said it was 28.696 percent, which it has rounded up to 29 percent, while the state said it was 28 percent. According to Cynthia Lim, LA Unified’s executive director of Office of Data and Accountability, the difference comes because LA Unified is including all decimal points of each subset category, such as for each grade level, then adding them together, while the state rounds off each subset of data to the nearest round number. A state representative said the department is still looking into the discrepancy but that other school districts had also reported discrepancies of 1 percent in some of the data.)

The entire state and most large districts showed improvement in the second year of the new Common Core-aligned tests, called the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP). Here’s a look at how LA Unified — the largest district in the state — compares with the other large districts.

The district was seventh out of 10 on the English language arts (ELA) test:

LA Unified was seventh out of 10 on the math test:

LA Unified was seventh out of 10 on the performance of disabled students on the ELA test, and eighth on the math test: (click the math button to change the numbers from English language arts to math)

The performance of LA Unified’s English learners was tied for worst on both the English and math tests:

LA Unified did not fare much better on the performance of economically disadvantaged students. Only eight districts are shown, as data are still incomplete for San Francisco and Long Beach:

By Iris Maria Chávez

Ignorance is bliss, as the saying goes, and no state has taken that message more to heart than California. Alone among the 50 states, California stopped reporting accountability ratings for public schools in 2013 and was the first state in the nation to hit pause on accountability.

Now, with responsibility for accountability largely in the hands of states under the updated federal education law, the question looms: Will California reinstate real accountability to protect its 6.2 million students who are overwhelmingly low-income and Spanish-speaking, or will it remain in the shadows?

To understand how we got here, a little history lesson is in order. In 2013, the California legislature, with House Bill 484, put in place new assessments and paused utilizing API (California’s longtime accountability system) to allow for implementation of the new assessments.

The legislature also passed a new funding system, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) that requires districts to develop Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs) that map performance targets and create plans to achieve those targets. In 2015, the state began full-scale use of the new Smarter Balanced assessment, and the State Board of Education paused use of the API for yet another year. It is not clear when exactly it will return.

There are many reasons for Californians to take a moment and ask, “How do we ensure that schools are supporting students, that parents have quality information about their schools, and the state is monitoring and supporting improvement?”

Many of the changes that are being implemented are intended to improve achievement for California students in the long term, but there’s a lot at stake, particularly for students of color. Improvement has been slow for all groups of California students, and the state ranks in the bottom 10 compared to all states, in all grades and subject areas for students overall on the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP).

Latino and African American students continue to underperform compared to their white peers. While Latino students have been making slow, steady gains on most subjects on NAEP (16 points on eighth-grade reading since 2003) the Latino-white gaps continue to range between 24 to 30 points.

In 2015, Hispanic students had an average fourth-grade reading score that was 31 points lower than that for white students. This performance gap was not significantly different from that in 1998 (35 points). In 2015, black students had an average fourth-grade reading score that was 33 points lower than that for white students, and this performance gap was not significantly different from that in 1998 (31 points). The Education Trust West recently released a report, Black Minds Matter, that lays out the troubling impact, on students and their future, if “the California Department of Education [continues to] lack an office, initiative or committee focused on African American achievement or the achievement gap, more generally.” We need a clear, coordinated focus on closing the achievement gap in California.

We need systems and policy changes that support better schools and better achievement for students. In the short term, however, many of these new policies come with some troubling challenges and many are having a negative impact on the availability of consistent, high-quality information on student, and school, performance.

The effects of recent actions have far-reaching implications for parents, advocates and policymakers. Without annual information, from high-quality assessments, on school and district performance, the state and district lack meaningful data to inform and enforce intervention decisions for low-performing schools, essentially putting the most needed interventions on hold for years.

Parents do not have objective information regarding school performance. Educators and school leaders lack the ability to compare their school’s performance to similarly situated schools across the state for the last few years. And charter management organizations (CMOs) and philanthropic partners do not have performance data to inform decisions regarding support of charter schools.

The State Board of Education is currently considering what a new accountability system ought to include. At a minimum, any new accountability system must be transparent and easily understandable by parents. It should be based on multiple measures, including college and career readiness and graduation rates as well as evidence of student growth.

Finally, the purpose of accountability is not simply to show us where we succeed and where we fall short but to actually drive improvements where needed. California should establish clear statewide goals by subgroup and publicly report progress toward these goals, district goals should be tied to these state goals, and  schools and districts that fail to make sufficient progress toward these goals should receive escalating assistance and interventions.

Even before the new federal law shifted the power away from Washington, the state was responsible for protecting children, promoting equity and ensuring a quality education for all kids. If we know one thing in the new century it is that, in the modern economy, ignorance is anything but blissful. Let’s hope the message isn’t lost on America’s largest state.

Iris Maria Chávez is an education advocate and communications consultant working with national and Oregon-focused organizations to advance equity by supporting the creation of just policies, engaging with communities and supporting communications efforts that better communities in Oregon and across the nation. She worked for over a decade in Washington, D.C., in education policy and advocacy for civil rights and advocacy organizations such as the Education Trust and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).

But when all factors are considered, there is little conclusive evidence in the report outlining the expansion plans that shows big investments in charters always — or evenly routinely — achieve consistent academic improvements, raising an important question: Just what can Broad and other foundations promise for an investment of nearly half a billion dollars in an expansion effort that would dramatically change the nation’s second-largest school district?

The Broad plan points to three of LA Unified’s largest charter operators that have received Broad largess — Green Dot Public Schools, Alliance College-Ready Public Schools and KIPP Public Charter Schools — and says, “These organizations have turned our investments into significant academic gains for students.”

In some cases, the gains are clear, but in others they are not. One category shows a regression in test scores, and others that demonstrate only marginal gains.

The analysis looks at five years of “proficiency rates” for the organizations’ schools, spanning 2008-09 through 2012-13. Although the document does not explicitly say, it appears the data refers to scores on the old Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) exams, which were discontinued after 2012-13.

It’s also unclear what exactly “proficiency rates” refers to. For purposes of comparison with the new Smarted Balanced tests, the district and the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) combined the top two categories, “met” and” exceeded” standards. In the previous tests, the state broke down results into four levels of achievement, with one called “Proficiency” and a superior level called “Advanced.” But it’s not clear if the Broad report used one category or combined the higher two.

Swati Pandey, the Broad Foundation communications manager, did not respond to an email, seeking an explanation.

Over five years, proficiency rates for Green Dot students in English language arts actually decreased by 3 percent, while math rates at Alliance middle schools improved a total of 1 percent and English rates at the Alliance middle schools improved a total of 5 percent over five years.

Other areas are impressive — a 20 percent gain in English proficiency for KIPP schools over four years and a 13 percent increase in math for Green Dot schools, but the report does not discuss or examine the negative and minimal gains.

The recent Smarter Balanced statewide tests, which this year replaced the STAR exams after two years without any statewide tests, also show impressive results for the three organizations, but they also raised questions. (The Broad report did not include any analysis of the Smarter Balanced tests.)

Key in any analysis is the number of English learners and low-income students — two groups that have proven to be among the most challenging to educate — and these numbers never match up quite evenly between charters and traditional schools.

An analysis by LA School Report shows Alliance schools had 45.4 percent of its students meeting or exceeding the English standards on the Smarter Balanced tests, compared with 33 percent at LA Unified’s schools.

However, Alliance has far fewer English learners. According to its website data, 18.83 percent of its students are English learners, compared with 26 percent for LA Unified. And Alliance students actually scored worse in math, with 23.5 percent meeting or exceeding standards compared with 25 percent for the district. In fairness to Alliance, its schools have 93 percent of its students qualifying for free or reduced price lunch, compared with 77 percent for the district.

KIPP and Green Dot schools fared much better on the Smarter Balanced tests, with the percentage of students meeting or exceeding standards beating LA Unified schools by double digits in both math and English.

Both the CCSA and LA Unified exchanged blows in their analysis of the Smarter Balanced results. The CCSA pointed out that LA Unified’s independent charters bested the district schools, but it was only by 2.5 percent overall in the number that met or exceeded the standards. It then released another analysis that shows if district affiliated charters were removed from the equation the demographics matched up closer and independent charters scored better than LA Unified.

The district countered with a release that showed its magnet schools outperformed charters, but it must be considered that magnets have fewer English learners and low-income students.

Jumping into the mix is the Associated Administrators of the Los Angeles (AALA), which in its recent newsletter criticized the CCSA analysis, saying the “wins” of charters on the tests are diminished “when one considers that the enrollment of traditional schools includes 6% more English learners, who presumably would be at a disadvantage on the SBAC English language arts assessment (though they were apparently not at the same disadvantage on the SBAC math assessment). In addition, the traditional schools have a slightly higher percentage of students who qualify for the federal free or reduced-price lunch program.”

AALA also said that “the analysis presented in the CCSA press release is sophomoric advocacy at the expense of rigor. Serious comparisons may only be made between schools with similar socio-economic status.”

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Students at Reseda Elementary

While overall scores on the recent Smarter Balanced tests for LA Unified were disappointing, there are quite a few schools proving they can beat the odds of poverty and language barriers.

At least 16 qualify as diamonds in the rough — or as Superintendent Ramon Cortines recently described them, “pockets of excellence.”

Despite an above-average number of students that qualify for free and reduced price meals and an above average number of English learners, the schools scored above the district average in both math and English language arts tests. LA Unified has 77 percent of its students who quality for free or reduced price lunch, and 26 percent who are English learners.

These 16 schools — all of them elementary (see list below) — are not magnets or affiliated charters, nor do they participate in the School for Advanced Studies program, which embeds gifted students within a school, contributing to the school’s overall performance. Those schools represent an additional 23 schools that scored above average on both tests despite above average English learners and low-income students.

For the 16 traditional schools highlighted here, there is nothing specialized about them. They are simply neighborhood schools that appear to have solved some of the challenges in educating English learners and students from low-income families. At least one is located in each of the seven school board districts and in each of the six instructional districts.

The schools stand as models for a district in which roughly three-fourths of students tested cannot meet basic state standards in math and two-thirds cannot meet the standards in English.

When looking to explain the poor scores, which were far below the state average, Deputy Superintendent of Instruction Ruth Perez pointed to poverty and language barriers, saying “I think we find above all our poverty is definitely still an issue for the performance of our students, and the acquiring of a second language, our English language learners.”

But then there is a place like Reseda Elementary, where over 90 percent of the students qualify for free and reduced price lunch and half are English learners. More than a third of its students met or exceeded the standards in English (38 percent) and math (36 percent), beating the district averages.

Compare these scores with a place like nearby Chatsworth Charter High School, an affiliated charter in the western San Fernando Valley, where despite the number of low-income students (57.6 percent) and English learners (11 percent) only 29 percent meet the standards in English and 9 percent meet them in math. (Chatsworth Principal Timothy Guy did not respond to a request to comment.)

“I was very excited that were were above LAUSD in every single one, in every grade,” said Reseda Principal Rosemarie Kubena. “Some were far above. I was very excited because we worked so hard.”

Kubena said getting her staff on board and in support of the new Common Core standards may have been key to her students’ success. The Smarter Balanced tests represented the state’s first use of them for learning based on the Common Core standards, which prioritize critical thinking and problem solving over memorization.

“I’m really into Common Core. What ever comes up there I research it and we collaborate on it, and I think that’s one reason why we did well,” said Kubena, who has been principal at the school for 17 years. “We’ve been working on [Common Core] ever since it came out, a lot of [professional development], a lot of experts came out, and slowly but surely we’ve been nipping at it. When my teachers talked to teachers at other schools, they said, ‘We’re so far ahead. We’re so far ahead.’ And we have been. We’ve been working on it for a few years.”

The Smarter Balanced test was also the first time a test was administered online statewide. Some schools had trouble getting their students enough time to practice using iPads and other laptops and tablets many were taken on.

But that wasn’t a problem at Reseda, where Kubena said students had plenty of time to practice. As part of its computer lab, the school for several years had 30 iPads that were not connected to the infamous and cancelled Common Core Technology Program. The school was given 60 additional iPads to administer the tests.

“They had to get used to using the technology before you can take any kind of test,” Kubena said. “We had an intervention program that required them to use the computer so they are getting used to it. That’s one of the biggest problems, initially, is getting the kids used to the technology. There may be some schools that didn’t have the opportunity to do that.”

But Common Core acceptance and computer issues aside, there may be an X-factor involved in the success of the schools, something that can’t be easily quantified but comes down to inspirational leadership, inspired teaching and involving parents in the process.

“If you let the children participate in their own learning: Don’t give them the answers. Let them figure it out. Guide them, facilitate their learning as opposed to just lecturing them. Have them explain their answers, and no matter what you do, just have a lot of oral language with your children,” Kubena said when asked what advice she would offer other schools.

“That’s been the biggest push we have with our parents. It’s often said, ‘Children should be seen and not heard,’ but we’ve been pushing with the parents that if you develop the child’s language — even if it is in Spanish it doesn’t matter because the skills transfer — but if you just let the child explain. The idea is to involve the student in their own learning.”

These are the 16 elementary schools that have above-average district levels of low-income students and English leaners, but also scored above average for both Math and English on the Smarter Balanced tests. Click on the school name to see the test results.

• 122nd Street 
• Bryson Avenue
• Brooklyn Avenue
• Castelar Street
• Dayton Heights
• Gardena
• Garrvanza
• Harvard Street
• Hoover Street
• Madison
• Nevin Avenue
• Newcastle
• Reseda
• Van Ness
• Vermont Avenue
• Wilshire Park

* A previous version of this story listed Dyer Street and Ranchito Avenue schools on the list, but they are a part of the School for Advanced Studies program

Ramon Cortines

LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines is praising the high performance of the district’s magnet schools on on the recent Smarter Balanced standardized tests, which based on a district analysis shows 65 percent of them scoring higher than the state average in English language arts and 56 percent of them scoring higher than average in math.

LA Unified currently has 198 magnet schools, which are specialized schools with a particular academic focus, ranging from the arts to math to science. The magnets are open to all students living within the district, although some do fill up and have waiting lists. Enrollment is also based on a point system that includes consideration of race, as the magnets were originally created in the 1970s to help integration efforts. Forty of them are Gifted/High-Ability and Highly Gifted programs, which require students to meet some eligibility criteria. Independent charter schools are not allowed by law to require students to meet any academic criteria for enrollment.

Cortines’ statement touting the magnets vs. independent charters is perhaps meant to counter some of the breakdowns of test scores that were done by the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), which showed LA Unified’s independent charters beating LA Unified’s traditional schools by a few percentage points in the sores, and by significantly more when the district’s affiliated charters were removed from the equation. Affiliated charters have a higher percentage of white and non-economically challenged students, and when removed the demographics of LAUSD and independent charters match up closely.

The CCSA did not comment on the district analysis of charters vs. magnets.

Charter operators and the district have long been in a propaganda war over which provides a better education, but the stakes have been raised significantly higher over the last month in the wake of the news that a group of deep-pocketed charter advocates are drawing up a plan to add 260 new independent charters to the district. Battle lines are being drawn, with board President Steve Zimmer saying recently that the plan is really an effort to “bring down” the district.

Although magnets and charters do not match up demographically, the solid performance of the magnets is a feather in the cap of LA Unified, which overall scored poorly on the tests, with roughly two-thirds of students falling below basic standards in English and three-fourths falling below standards in math.

Cortines also pointed out some “pockets of excellence” in the district at some traditional schools that scored well even with high levels of economically challenged students.

Source: CCSA

Students from LA Unified’s independent charter schools outperformed their counterparts at traditional schools on the recent Smarter Balanced standardized tests in the number meeting and exceeding standards, according to a new analysis by the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA).

The charter group found that the charter students scored nine percentage points higher in English language arts but only four percentage points higher in math.

The new analysis differs from a previous one by CCSA, in that it removes LA Unified’s 53 affiliated charters from the comparison, as the state does. Affiliated charters are district schools that operate with most of the same rules as regulations that govern traditional schools but with greater autonomy over spending decisions. Their teachers are union members.

The district’s 211 independent charters are publicly-funded schools run by outside groups who have even more autonomy, and in most cases, their teachers are not union members.

Students from affiliated charters accounted for only 22,750 of the district’s 267,228 students — about 8.5 percent — who took the tests, but they tend to skew the comparison because their racial and economic demographics do not match up with the district averages. They tend to have about half as many children from families living in poverty, with dozens of the schools located in more affluent neighborhoods of the San Fernando Valley.

Including their scores with those from traditional district schools reduces the difference between independent charters to only a few percentage points.

By removing them from consideration, the demographics of traditional schools and independent charters match up more closely. According to the CCSA analysis, LA Unified’s affiliated charters have 47 percent white students, 30 percent Latino and 7 percent black, compared with 7, 74 and 13 for independent charters and 7, 77 and 9 for traditional schools.

“The main point is that autonomous charters, with nearly identical demographics, outperform traditional schools on both subjects,” the CCSA said in an email.

The demographic differences are also noteworthy due to a very large achievement gap that black and Latino students showed on the tests compared with their white counterparts. Also affiliated charters tend to have fewer English-language learners, 7 percent, compared with 22 percent for traditional schools and 19 percent for independents. English learners also showed a significant achievement gap.

The CCSA also pointed out that affiliated charters have 35 percent economically disadvantaged students, while traditional schools have 83 percent and independent charters have 82 percent.

Cynthia Lim, LA Unified’s executive director of Office of Data and Accountability, declined to comment on the charter group’s numbers, saying, “Our analysis is currently under review by the Superintendent.”

The relevance of these scores as they relates to charter schools is sure to be a hot topic for discussion in the coming months, considering the announcement recently from group of powerful foundations that are planning a major expansion of independent charters in LA Unified.

The teachers union, UTLA, is leading a fight against the expansion even though the foundations have resisted providing any information about their intensions.

LA Unified has the most English learners of any district in the country, at roughly 155,000, and a troubled history of educating them. In 2011 it settled a complaint by the federal Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which found that the district had failed to provide adequate services to English learners. As part of the agreement, the school board passed an overhauled English Learner Master Plan in 2012 meant to increase services for ELLs.

In the English language arts part of the new statewide tests, only 3 percent of LA Unified’s ELLs scored in the top categories — exceeding and meeting standards — and only 5 percent did so in math. That compared with 11 percent in both subject areas statewide for ELLs.

Compared with the state’s 11 other large districts, LA Unified’s ELLs finished second-to-last in English language arts, ahead of Frenso and Oakland by a single percentage point in the number of students meeting or exceeding standards. In math, the district’s ELLs tied for second to last with San Jose and Oakland at 5 percent, with Fresno coming last at 3 percent.

San Francisco led the pack with 21 percent of its ELLs scoring in the top categories. The 11 other districts averaged 8.6 percent in the top categories for English and 9.5 percent in math.

Hilda Maldonado, director of LA Unified’s Multilingual and Multicultural Division, said the district is still analyzing its results and trying to determine how many of the ELLs who took the test are at the beginning of English language acquisition and how many are near the end. A difference in those numbers could explain the district’s relatively poor performance.

But LA Unified also doesn’t provide the same level of services as the top performer, San Francisco, which has roughly 30 percent of its ELLs enrolled in bilingual programs, compared with a five percent average around the state. At LA Unified, Maldonado said, bilingual programs are only offered at about 60 of the district’s 1,000-plus campuses.

“The services that San Francisco offers, we don’t offer at that higher rate, but we are looking to expand the duel language and bilingual language programs. That’s one of the charges that is under our office this year,” she said.

To what extent the district is exploring an expansion, Maldonado said, is still under discussion. She also pointed out progress the district has made since the settlement with the feds: One of the major problems the federal investigation found was the district’s high level of long-term English learners who were not progressing after years of instruction.

“I think we’ve been able to cut [long-term English learners] by about 10,000 to 15,000 students. We started off with about 40,000 long-term,” Maldonado said.

The district’s poor ELL performance could also add fuel to a lawsuit brought earlier this year by Community Coalition South Los Angeles and a parent that accuses LA Unified of improperly calculating and distributing money from the Local Control Funding Formula, a 2013 state law intended to direct extra money to high-need students. The result, they assert, deprives low-income, foster youth and English language learners of $2 billion in funds that should be directed to their education.

Maldonado sidestepped the question of whether the district needs to dedicate more LCFF funds to its English learners.

“Rather than say it costs more money to educate these children, our office thinks of it more from the perspective of, look at his wonderful assets these kids bring by having a second language,” she said.

Following the release of the tests results last week, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson said he is seeking funding from the Legislature and the Department of Finance for three positions within the California Department of Education to help insure that English learners are receiving quality instruction. The move arises out of the settlement of a lawsuit involving English learners,

“Serving English learners, who make up nearly one-quarter of our public school students, is one of my top priorities,” he said. “We are eager to carry out the terms of this settlement, including adding staff and providing additional guidance to districts, so together we can make sure English learners get the support they deserve.”

However, if there is one piece of gold in the rubble, it is that the district’s black and Latino students were basically even in performance with the statewide average of black and Latino students, give or take a few percentage points depending on the category.

Sixty-one percent of the district’s white students met or exceeded the standards in English, and 52 met or exceeded the standard in math. This compares with 24 percent of the black students and 27 percent of Latino students who met or exceeded the standards in English, and 15 percent of black students and 19 percent of Latino students who met or exceeded the standard in math.

Statewide, the average for all students was 44 percent meeting or exceeding English standards and 33 percent meeting or exceeding the math standard. LA Unifed’s racial demographics is 74 percent Latino, 9.8 percent white, 8.4 percent black, and 6 percent Asian.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson pointed to the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) as the main way the state can work at closing the racial achievement gap. The LCFF first went into effect for the 2013-14 school year and is intended to drive extra money toward students who are English learners, eligible to receive a free or reduced-price meals or foster youth.

“Clearly, we must continue working to eliminate these gaps,” Torlakson said in a statement. “Much work needs to be done, but we are moving in the right direction with our efforts to provide extra resources and services for students and schools with the greatest needs.”

The Smarter Balanced test is aligned with the new Common Core standards and its scores are not comparable to the old API scores, officials have stressed, but Cynthia Lim, LA Unified’s executive director of the office of Data and Accountability, conceded that the gaps remain regardless of what test is being administered.

“I think we still see the achievement gaps that we had in the old test,” Lim said in a phone call with reporters. “I don’t think that the achievement gaps went away because we have a new test. I think we see the same patterns that we had in the past.”

Cynthia Lim, executive director of the office of Data and Accountability, told LA School Report today that more than 50 percent of students have begun at least one section of the four-part exam.

“As of today, we are right on schedule,” Lim said, explaining that students are seven weeks into a 13 week testing window.

“We are not behind,” she insisted.

A report issued Monday to school board members by Lim said 632 schools had begun testing and 40 percent of students had completed one test section.

“But the numbers have gone up since then,” she said.

The Smarter Balanced exams are being administered to students in grades 3 through 8 and 11, until June 4. They replace California’s statewide exams after the adoption of the Common Core State Standards. Results will eventually be used to measure a school’s academic improvement over time, although the state is currently appealing a federal directive to implement scores this year.

Lim’s data indicates a vast improvement in the district’s technology support and infrastructure over last year, the first time students were given the exam.

Results for the dry-run last spring were not made public, but in a survey following the field test, many schools reported technical difficulties: students were unable to log onto the testing site, connections to the internet were spotty and many students were booted out of the system, unable to complete the test.

Teachers and students experienced similar problems in February, when the district participated in a statewide “dress rehearsal” for this year’s test. However, the state took the lion’s share of the blame for the inability of schools to log onto the testing site, which is administered by the California Department of Education. As a result, it updated the secured browser that students use to take the actual test.

This time around, “staff in the Student Testing Branch and support staff in the Information Technology Division have reported no major issues that have prevented schools from testing thus far,” Lim writes in the report.

Most of the problems reported to the district’s help desk have been focused on student log in credentials, test administration guidelines, resetting passwords, accommodations for students with disabilities and requests to re-open or reset tests.

Amid the furor comes a new report by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) that cuts right the heart of the matter: exactly how much time do students in America spend preparing for and taking standardized tests?

While the report simply presents the numbers without judgement, it did come to some head-turning conclusions by gathering data from several different studies and surveys of large and suburban school districts. Among the findings:

• Students take mandated state and district standardized tests an average of once per month, accounting for approximately 1.6 percent of instructional time per year.
• Students take an average of 113 standardized tests between pre-kindergarten and 12th grade.
• Eleventh grade students undergo the most testing, with one surveyed district reporting that its students spend up to 27 days of the year taking tests.
• A survey of large districts shows at least 23 distinct purposes for tests.
• On average, districts require more tests than states, K–2 students take three times more K–2 district exams than state exams, and high school students take twice as many district exams as state exams.
• 49 percent of U.S. parents think their children take too many standardized tests.
•  Urban students spend more time taking district-mandated exams than their suburban peers, with high school urban students spending 266 percent more time.

The wireless iPads and Chromebooks represent part of a huge, $500 million technology investment by LA Unified that, just last year, was hailed as a pioneering effort to bridge the digital divide, a modern civil rights struggle.

But given the choice, Ayala didn’t want the shiny new devices for the test. He opted for the old technology — because it works.

“Once again, I am proud to report that our collective goal of having all Frost students using a real computer, instead of a tablet, has been met,” he announced on the school’s website yesterday, the first day eighth graders at the school began taking the exam. Eventually, all classes will cycle through one of the school’s three computer labs for the Common Core-aligned test, he explained.

“We discovered that the iPads were a little bit frustrating to the students,” he told LA School Report. “The screen was a little bit too small and the calibration of the screens needed to be tailored to each individual student, and that takes a lot.”

This can hardly come as welcome news to district officials, who have been debating for months the proper use of digital devices for instruction and testing. While hardly dispositive of the entire district, the choice at Robert Frost suggests that the school board has fallen short in assessing the attractiveness of tablets compared with more reliable hardwired desktops. It also suggests that principals, teachers and students didn’t have enough input in decision-making, if they had any at all.

Board Member Bennett Kayser raised the issue at last week’s school board meeting.

Despite months of preparation and costly modernizing projects by LA Unified, a district-wide practice run of the Smarter Balanced test earlier this month revealed a variety of technical issues. While most problems were caused by a crash of the state-operated testing website, many others stemmed from internet connectivity issues at the district and school levels. One third of students participating in the dress rehearsal, were unable to complete the test.

“Would [the practice run] have been better if students worked in computer labs? Were there less system issues in computer labs or with devices that were provided to students throughout the year?” Kayser asked Cynthia Lim, the district’s head of data and accountability,

Her response: “We didn’t collect that kind of data of, was it easier or was it a smoother experience. We just know that schools, whether they used desktops or Chromebooks, everyone encountered some kind of issue.”

But a report on the outcomes of the same exam last year, found students who took the test on a hardwired desktop experienced fewer technical snags than those on wireless devices. And, the “Chair’s Report on the Common Core Technology Project Ad Hoc Committee” spearheaded by board member Monica Ratliff, stated, “Anecdotal evidence was presented that desktop computers and/or devices with larger screens were the preferred device for test taking.”

The test is split into three distinct sections — English language, math and an essay — that must be taken on a computer. The exam is designed to be computer adaptive, changing the difficulty of questions based on previous answers, which is supposed to allow for more pointed assessments and results.

Ayala didn’t feel the need to wait for the district to decide which device was better. He listened to feedback from his students and stuck with what worked best for them.

At the end of the day, the first full day of test-taking, Ayala was happy with his student’s progress in the computer labs: no computer meltdowns and no reports of technical snafus.

“We were ready, and Frost is doing very well, ” he said. “We wanted to give our students the best advantage of taking the test in a very comfortable setting. It’s working for us.”

Superintendent Ramon Cortines told the LA Unified board today that he believes the state will delay using statewide computerized test results for any official measures.

“The word on the street is that they’re looking favorably that this year’s test will not count,” he said during a discussion of the the district’s use of computers for testing.

The decision rests with the State Board of Education, which is meeting tomorrow and Thursday in Sacramento. Cortines was among many superintendents and local officials who have lobbied the board to postpone using the test scores to measure schools and student progress because of technical problems students encountered with district and state hardware. 

For that reason, he told the board, “It shouldn’t be put on the backs of students, teachers and school administrators because we were not prepared.”

Cynthia Lim, the district’s top official for data and accountability, told the board that a Feb. 19 “dress rehearsal” of the computerized tests was fraught with problems, including access to servers and slow speed of data delivery.

“There was a lot of frustration,” she said, but adding that many of the problems have been addressed.

“The readiness test pointed out areas that need improvement and repair prior to the operational test this spring,” Cynthia Lim, Executive Director of the Office of Data and Accountability said in a report examining the survey’s findings.

All LA Unified schools were asked to mimic test conditions by having at least one class in grades 3 through 8 and 11 access the state-administered test on Feb. 19. The purpose of the exercise was to put maximum stress on the district’s technology infrastructure to identify and resolve any glitches before the actual test is given later this month.

The future doesn’t look so bright: Many schools reported frustration over the lack of connection and an inability to access the practice test.

Of the 775 schools that responded to the survey, almost half reported difficulties in connecting with the state testing website. Other problems came with the practice test itself, such as advancing to the next page and using graphing tools within the test. The California Department of Education has since updated the secured browser that students will be using to take the actual test.

But the district’s share of tech problems also raise “readiness” concerns, the survey showed. Students reported difficulty with internet connections, overall slow speeds and problems with iPads not loading or freezing or receiving “Access Denied” errors.

Additional findings include:

• 61,310 students took the practice test within a four-hour window, while 275,000 are expected to take the exam over a month.
• The district’s total bandwidth was severely stressed, and schools experienced overall network slowness during this time. They were not able to log into applications, such as MiSiS, or utilize schools’ wireless networks.
• A third of schools were unable to get through to the practice test.
• Despite months-long delay in re-delivering iPads and laptops to schools, only 75 percent of schools’ testing devices and 80 percent of schools one-to-one devices have been updated with the latest software and applications required for the test.
• 56 percent of schools used wireless connections while 38 percent used a combination of wired and wireless.
• Nearly 80 percent reported that classrooms using the internet for instructional activities experienced connectivity issues during the readiness test.
• 24 schools reported having limited bandwidth, affecting access. (See below for a full list.) The district said today it has fixed problems at 10 of the schools.

The district did not track how many students were able to complete the test.

Elementary and middle school students will take the Smarter Balanced test between tomorrow and June 4. The window for 11th grade students is shorter, from April 15 through June 4.

Schools reporting limited bandwidth: Ann Street Elementary, Euclid Elementary, Farmdale Elementary, Hoover Elementary, Trinity Elementary, Beckford Charter for Enriched Studies, Brainard Elementary, Capistrano Elementary, Chandler Elementary, San Fernando Elementary, 18th Street Elementary, Huntington Park Elementary, Park Avenue Elementary, San Antonio Elementary, Community Magnet Charter School, Raymond Avenue Elementary, Warner Elementary, Wonderland Elementary, Griffith Joyner Elementary, City of Angeles-6th Avenue, City of Angels-Woodland Hills, City of Angels-Venice, Evergreen High School, Riley High School.

The aim is to identify and resolve any glitches in the technological infrastructure before the tests are given, Lydia Ramos, a district spokesperson told LA School Report.

The only open question is whether the results of the official tests will be used for high stakes accountability purposes, especially federal funding. Superintendent Ramon Cortines is among many high ranking officials around the state calling for a delay in using this year’s test scores to calculate future academic growth.

The State Board of Education is expected to make a final recommendation at its next meeting in mid-March.

In either case, LA Unified is using the rehearsal tests to make sure it’s ready.

“This way we’ll know if there are any connectivity issues or problems accessing the test before kids actually have to take it,” Ramos said.

The exam must be taken on a computer, which means a majority of LA Unified students will be taking it on an iPad. However, some older students will have access to laptops.

Every elementary, middle and high school throughout the district will administer the exam to at least one class of students in grades 3-8 and grade 11, Ramos said.

Additionally, schools will be asked to complete a survey Feb 20 to report any issues that arise.

“We’re simply trying to get ready for this new world of computerized testing,” said Ramos.

The district conducted a similar trial run last year and found many schools experienced technical difficulties; Students were unable to log onto the testing site, connections to the internet were spotty, and many students were booted out of the system, unable to complete the test.

At the time, Cynthia Lim, executive director of the department that oversees the deployment of devices for the Smarter Balanced test and the infrastructure required to administer it, contended a lot of the problems were “due to the fact they delivered the devices so close to the testing dates.”

But this year, the district failed to deliver testing devices on schedule. Several hiccups have delayed their delivery by four months. The district had initially promised an October delivery date, but even now, six schools are still waiting on their devices.

Those schools will still participate in the System Readiness test, Ramos confirmed.

“They’re going to get support from [the district’s central office] to make sure they can take the test,” she said. For now, the six schools are scheduled to receive the testing iPads next week.

On a related note, Board member Monica Ratliff informed the board last week that 399 iPads intended for testing have gone missing. She was wrong, says Bernadette Lucas, director of the district’s technology project.

“At this point we have 343 unaccounted for iPads,” she told LA School Report. “But they’re not considered lost or stolen.” It is possible, she added, that many of them are in an office or storage space in “off” mode where they cannot register to the system. “They’re not pinging because they’ve been off for a while,” she said.

Elementary and middle school students will official take  the Smarter Balance test between March 4 through June 4. The window for 11th grade students is shorter, from April 15 through June 4.

In its first meeting of 2015, the LA Unified school board tomorrow will debate a range of issues, from students’ eating alone to farm workers’ pay. But it’s the issue of state testing that will have the most immediate and significant impact on more than 300,000 district students.

Adding a powerful voice to the growing opposition against using the Smarter Balanced computer test this spring as means of measuring academic growth, board Members Monica Ratliff and Tamar Galatzan have co-sponsored a resolution that asks the state to delay use of the test results for any official purposes.

“It would be patently unfair to use the Spring 2015 SBAC assessment results for high stakes accountability purposes with respect to the students, teachers and schools of the District and any other school districts in a similar situation,” they say in their resolution, which will be voted on during the afternoon session.

Rarely do Galatzan and Ratliff work together on an issue. If passed, their measure would put the state’s largest school district in opposition to the tests.

The primary objection is not that students are ill-prepared in the subject matter — the new Common Core standards — but rather, they have not had the sufficient time to become familiar with the testing devices on which the computerized exam will be administered.

Due to a slew of technical and organizational challenges, the district has been unsuccessful in getting tablets and laptops into the hands of all students taking the test. All students in grades 3 through 8 and 11 are required to take the exam.

If passed, the message from the board to the State Board of Education would echo the plea made by LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines in December. In a letter to State Chief Superintendent Tom Torlakson, Cortines wrote, “[W]e do not feel that our students have had adequate time practicing on the testing devices.”

As a result, he added, “I would like to ask that any data or scores derived from [testing] not have a negative impact on state and/or federal funds that are allocated for the students in LAUSD.”

The state Board of Education will take up the issue at its next meeting, on Wednesday.

“Only the State Education Board has the power to decide on that,” Pam Slater, a spokesperson for Torlakson’s office told LA School Report.

Slater says no decisions have been made on how districts will calculate academic growth, should the Smarter Balanced test scores be delayed, but it’s possible they could rely on the formula used this year: an average of the last three years worth of API scores.

“Again, it’s the State Board that will guide how this is going to look for the future,” she said.

Tom Torlakson

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson today announced that 227 school sites, including 33 in LA Unified, will share nearly $27 million in Broadband Infrastructure Improvement Grants (BIIG) to help school districts increase their ability to administer the state’s new online tests this spring.

“These state grants provide the critical last step needed to connect an additional 63,000 students to the state education network that will give them access to technology, which will prepare them for college and careers, and let them take the new computer-based California assessments,” Torlakson said in a press release.

The Common Core-aligned Smarter Balanced Field Test is scheduled to be administered by the district in the spring, although it is still unclear if the results will be used. Over the winter break, the LA Unified ordered 21,000 iPad Airs and 6,000 Chromebooks, at a cost of $13 million, to help administer the test, bringing the number of testing iPads the district owns at just over 73,000.

During practice tests last spring, about 300 schools in the state either lacked the ability administer the test or were able to only accommodate the tests by shutting down all other online activities, according to Torlakson’s office. Of these 300 sites, 227 will be awarded BIIG funding.

“While school sites with the most need were selected to receive the grants, this process has provided further data to help those schools that didn’t receive funding at this time,” Imperial County Superintendent of Schools Todd Finnell, whose agency administers the K12HSN program, said in a press release. “Additional work is needed to secure funding and identify possible solutions for these schools.”

While intense public scrutiny over the deal between the district and Apple and Pearson has put the district’s one-to-one iPad program on hold, leaving most students device-less for the past five months, the district has pushed ahead with acquiring the remaining tablets and laptops needed for the spring test.

Over the winter break it ordered 21,000 iPad Airs with matching keyboards and 6,000 Chromebooks, at a cost of $13 million. It puts the number of testing iPads at just over 73,000.

Joe Oliver, a Director in the Information Technology Division who coordinates the distribution of tablets and laptops, told LA School Report they will be delivered to classrooms by Feb 10.

“The iPads have been ordered, and they’re being delivered in waves,” Oliver said adding that all of the Chromebooks have already arrived.

As soon as classes resume next week, he said, the IT Department will begin distribution. Both the tablets and the laptops will need to have the Smarter Balanced test application installed, but the district plans to do that wirelessly.

“Everything is already configured,” he said. “We don’t need to do anything more.”

The iPad Airs, which are a generation older than the latest model — the iPad Air 2 — cost $510 each and the keyboards another $23 apiece. The Chromebooks came in just over $300 each.

Another batch of iPads that students and teachers are counting on to take the test, are ones purchased under LA Unified’s one-to-one technology. Oliver says the district is 75 percent of the way through redistributing those tablets. Delivery has been held up for months while the district upgraded the operating system iPads, which are loaded with Pearson’s Common Core curriculum.

Of the 57 schools that are part of the program, 15 remain without iPads. Although the district had initially promised a October delivery date, the new deadline is Feb 10, says Oliver.

Just what the test results will be used for — if anything — remains an open question.

There is a building chorus of state officials who don’t want the test results to count toward measuring how well students are grasping the new Common Core curriculum —  mostly because of problems associated with computerized testing.

In a letter to State Chief Superintendent Tom Torlakson last month, LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines wrote, “[W]e do not feel that our students have had adequate time practicing on the testing devices.”

The California State Board of Education will take up the issue at its next meeting on Jan 14.

LAUSD Superintedent Ramon Cortines

Responding to a barrage of requests from district superintendents around the state, including a recent appeal from LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines, state education officials will consider a delay in using the results of the 2014-15 Smarter Balanced computerized test as means of measuring academic growth next year.

“This will be a public discussion beginning with the next scheduled State Board meeting in January,” Keric Ashley, a deputy to Tom Torlakson, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, said in a written statement.

He added, “Regardless of this public discussion of the API, schools and parents will receive scores and the Superintendent strongly urges all schools to continue their preparation for the computer-adaptive assessments coming in the spring.”

The outcomes of this year’s reading and math tests are supposed to be used to establish a base in calculating Academic Performance Index (API) scores in 2015-16. But, at a meeting with the California Department of Education in November, leaders from several statewide educational organizations suggested a year-long postponement. They argued that many districts need more time to implement the state’s new Common Core curriculum while others do not posses the technological infrastructure to carry out the exam.

In a letter to Torlakson last week, Cortines joined a growing group of local superintendents’ seeking permission to ignore the test results for “high stakes accountability purposes.”

“We do not feel that our students have had adequate time practicing on the testing devices,” Cortines explained.

As a result, he added, “I would like to ask that any data or scores derived from [testing] not have a negative impact on state and/or federal funds that are allocated for the students in LAUSD.”

The Smarter Balanced tests have replaced California’s statewide exams as the state is transitioning to the Common Core State Standards. All students in third through eighth grade and high school juniors are required to take the exam. In all, nearly 350,000 LA Unified students will take the test in April.

LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines

In a sudden reversal for LA Unified, Superintendent Ramon Cortines is asking the state to ignore the district’s Smarter Balanced testing results as a measure of academic growth or improvement next year.

In a letter to the State Schools Chief, Tom Torlakson on Friday, Cortines wrote, “I have determined that it would be untimely to have the test results used for high stakes accountability purposes in spring 2015.”

He explained: “While LAUSD students in grades 3-8 and 11 participated in the Field Test last spring, we do not feel that our students have had adequate time practicing on the testing devices.”

“I would like to ask that any data or scores derived from [testing] not have a negative impact on state and/or federal funds that are allocated for the students in LAUSD,” he added.

The letter did not address what measure the district would or could use in the absence of computerized test results for purposes of tracking student and school levels of academic achievement and for qualifying for federal support dollars.

Torlakson, who was recently elected for a second term, did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Cortines has repeatedly expressed concern over the ticking clock on the time students will have to become familiar with wireless devices before taking the math and English exam, aimed at testing the state’s new Common Core standards, in April.

“I do not believe that the assessments this spring will be an accurate demonstration of what students have learned nor what our teachers have taught this school year…We do not feel that students and schools should be penalized for the transition to new standards, new assessments, and new technology,” he wrote to Torlakson.

But even as the school board agreed to buy another 21,000 devices that it says will be in students’ hands by January — a combination of iPads and Chromebooks — the district has botched the delivery of the tablets it already owns.

Tens of thousands of iPads which were intended for one-to-one use, in addition to 40,000 iPads that were purchased specifically for testing, are four months delayed in reaching their destination. And Bernadette Lucas, director of the district’s Common Core Technology Project, said it will take another month before they hit the classrooms.

Only about 44,000 of the 90,000 devices are back in use, the rest remain in storage.

Lucas told LA School Report the delay for middle schools and high schools in getting them their one-to-one devices was caused by the “take-home issue.”

“Many of our schools made it clear to us that having the devices on campuses before they could take them home would present logistical challenges that would affect instructional time,” she said.

The question of allowing students to take home the expensive tablets has been hotly debated. Many parents are afraid to take on the responsibility of replacing the $700 tablets should they be damaged or lost while off campus. Lucas said the district needed time to sort it out.

“So while, the secondary principals were very clear that they consider the instructional devices very important to their instructional programs as they planned around it, they needed the take home piece to have that for the operational aspect of the roll out,” she said.

With regard to getting testing devices back in classrooms, Lucas explained the hold-up  was due “all of the updating we had to do.”

Board member Monica Ratliff, whose committee has analyzed various aspects of the district’s technology program, told LA School Report she supports Cortines’ request of Torlakson, not to count this year’s results, which were designed to serve as a baseline for judging academic growth the following year.

“The Board of Education and educators across LAUSD should join Superintendent Cortines in advocating for the delay of [Smarter Balanced] results for high stakes accountability purposes,” she said.

It is possible for districts to give a pencil and paper version of the test, but Cortines’s letter makes no mention whether the district is considering that option. District officials are divided on whether it’s too late to substitute the computerized version of the test.

At this time, the only paper and pencil versions requested were for students requiring braille. All other students will be taking the online administration.

LA Unified conducted a dry-run of the tests last spring, but the results were not made public. However, many schools reported technical difficulties; students were unable to log onto the testing site, connections to the internet were spotty, and many students were booted out of the system, unable to complete the test.

But, Cynthia Lim, executive director of the department that oversees the deployment of devices for the Smarter Balanced test and the infrastructure required to administer it, said last month that the district has learned “many useful lessons” from last year’s experience and it will be prepared come spring.

Cortines’ request would appear to betray Lim’s confidence.