by Mark McDermott
Initial results from the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress were presented last week to the Board of Education. The data revealed areas of improvement and decline at different grade levels in the Manhattan Beach Unified School District.
Districtwide numbers remained mostly stable, although in some decline compared to pre-pandemic levels. The 2022-23 CAASPP found 80 percent of all MBUSD students meeting or exceeding English Language Arts standards, compared to 82 percent a year ago and 84 and 85 percent, respectively, in the two years before the pandemic lockdown and subsequent remote learning.
Jonathan Erickson, the district’s new director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment — which itself is a new position within MBUSD — emphasized that in the bigger picture, relative to other school districts, these numbers remain high.
“As you will notice, it’s pretty stable,” Erickson told the board. “There’s a small change of minus 2 percent in the total number of students proficient and advanced but [it is] still at 80 percent, which is extraordinarily high for any district.”
Erickson noted that comparative data has not yet been released but will be forthcoming in the next month.
Districtwide math numbers showed a similarly slight decline, with 72 percent of all MBUSD students meeting or exceeding state standards, down a percentage point from a year ago and seven to eight percent lower than pre-pandemic levels.
“If you look at all schools, it’s almost identical to last year,” Erickson said. “ in terms of overall you can see there was a little dip after the pandemic and we stayed flat from last year overall.”
Some specific grade levels showed significant improvements. In ELA, grades 3 and 4 jumped higher, as 85 percent of 3rd graders met or exceeded standards, up three percent from a year ago, while 4th grade jumped from 86 to 88 percent. Perhaps most significantly, 4th grade showed a 9 percent jump in students exceeding standards and a drop in students at the lowest end of not meeting standards from 6 percent to 3 percent.
“We had a 9 percent increase in ‘exceeds,’ so that means a lot of our students that would have been proficient got bumped up a level,” Erickson said. “But what I love to notice…one way to think about that change from last year to this year is we cut in half the number of students not meeting standards. And I think anytime we can say that, whether it was 8 percent to 4 percent or 6 percent to 3 percent, it means a lot — those are percentage numbers, but it is dozens of students that we made a difference for, end that’s really meaningful.”
Grade 6 also showed a 5 percent overall increase, including an 8 percent jump in students exceeding standards. The biggest decreases came in grades 7 and 11, which each experienced 6 percent drops in ELA.
Math performance increased at nearly every grade level. Grade 3 saw a 5 percent increase, and actually exceeded pre-pandemic levels. Grade 4 experienced a 4 percent increase and set a new record for the district as 61 percent not only met but exceeded standards, representing a 7 percent increase from last year. Grade 5 saw a modest 3 percent increase, while Grade 6 showed a big improvement, with a 9 percent increase in student exceeding standards, leading an overall 9 percent jump to 73 percent meeting or exceeding standards.
But two grade levels experienced big declines in math. Grade 8 dropped from 74 percent of students meeting or exceeding standards a year ago to 61 percent, while grade 11 dropped a single percentage point to 59 percent.
Assistant Superintendent Irene Castillo-Gonzalez said that staff is digging into what happened at both grade levels, but have found one possible explanation, and solution, at grade 8.
“We saw a decrease of 13 percent compared to the year prior in the percentage of students who met or exceeded,” she said. “Without going to detail, I wanted to share that we did have kind of an unfortunate circumstance where we had a substitute kind of in and out of math classes for a lot of last year. We really do believe that that also played a part in this decrease last year. One thing that we have been talking about as a staff is to strengthen communication when we have circumstances like that, to make sure we’re providing the school support.”
Student board member Emma Darrow provided one possible explanation for the drop in high school scores: the timing of the tests.
“The testing, if I’m remembering correctly, took place right in between AP testing and finals,” she said. “And I remember when our teacher told us we had to take this assessment, we were like, ‘Oh my gosh, no way we have to take another test.’ I remember students just trying to finish quickly so they could lay their heads down — like, kids were exhausted. I think that that definitely took down the effort level a lot.”
Fellow student board member Sophie Delino agreed.
“Even if it was changed to the first semester…I feel like a lot of kids are more ambitious and put more effort into things during the first semester, especially juniors and seniors,” she said. “I think it would make a huge difference. Juniors are just under so much stress, especially with APs.”
Trustee Bruce Greenberg praised the student members recommendations and emphasized the importance of CAASPP scores in general.
“This is our report card as a district,” he said. “We have a few other report cards but this is really one of our critical measures. We take a lot of pride in being a high-performing district, and as part of the communication to the students and families, we all have a vested interest in this report card — not only for the pride of the district but obviously it has tremendous implications for the district and the community real estate values and so many other things.”
Greenberg asked how the data is put into use by educators. Erickson said he and his staff met with the principal from every school for an in-depth and interactive examination of data in order to develop plans for focusing on areas that can be improved and learning from areas that had shown growth.
“We can set sensible goals. If every kid went up a little bit — we know which students are on the cusp — and we know what a reasonable growth target would be,” Erickson said. “So the data really helps us set ambitious but also feasible goals based on how students perform.”
Trustee Jen Fenton said one of the big takeaways was how well instruction had gone despite the huge challenges presented by the pandemic and its lingering consequences.
“You look at these fourth graders, who were babies during COVID, who were learning to read at home, not in the traditional classroom setting,” Fenton said. “I had older kids, so I wasn’t one of those parents who had to teach my kids how to read. I don’t know if I could have done it. But the interventions, whatever we’re doing, seem to have worked really well because a 9 percent increase in those who met or exceeded is a huge benchmark that we should be really proud of. I want to know what we’re doing there, I want to know exactly what’s going on in those classrooms because that’s how a district develops best practices.”
Trustee Wysh Weinstein, who is a former teacher, praised those instructors who were still able to connect with young students in the Zoom classrooms during the pandemic.
“My son was in kindergarten and first grade during COVID,” she said. “So that was all the basics, learning all the fundamentals of phonics and everything. It was fortunate I was a teacher, so I could provide that support, but it’s a testament to the third-grade teachers and the ones below that [grade level] that they really still were obviously getting that instruction out, even with the distance learning.”
Board president Cathey Graves praised the interventions made based on last year’s data and urged staff to likewise use this year’s data to address problem areas.
“The conversation that we’ve had about using this data in real time is critical,” she said. “To us as a board, this data is interesting to look at. But if we don’t do anything with it until next year that’s not effective. So I really appreciate the efforts that you’re making to make changes.” ER
