Manhattan Beach School district STAR scores still rising
The number of Manhattan Beach Unified School District students testing at proficient or advanced levels in the California Standardized Testing and Reporting Program, or STAR, continued to increase last year, according to results released by the California Department of Education (CDE) two weeks ago.
“When you look at the results, overall our scores stayed strong,” said Carolyn Seaton, MBUSD’s executive director of educational services. “We’re tremendously pleased. We’ve been fortunate enough to show growth in all four subjects.”
The state’s STAR program, implemented in 1997, is comprised of the California Standards Test, which measures students’ performance in English-language arts, science, math and history; the California Modified Assessment and the California Alternate Performance Assessment, both given to students with disabilities; and the Standards-based Tests in Spanish, designed for students who are Spanish-speaking English learners.
“Typically, we look at the scores over time,” Seaton said. “When the vast majority of kids are proficient and advanced, it’s hard to maintain growth.”
The state’s goal is to have 100 percent of students testing at proficient or advanced levels.
In math (grades two through seven and end-of-course students), 80.7 percent of students district wide tested as proficient or advanced, a 6.3 percent increase from 2009 scores; in history (grades eight, 11, and end-of-course students) 78.2 percent of students tested at those levels, a 5.8 percent increase; in English-language arts (grades two through 11), 87 percent of students tested at those levels, a 3.6 percent increase.
But the greatest growth was in science.
Science scores were subdivided into two groups. The percentage of students district wide who tested at proficient or advanced levels was 87.9 for science CST (grades five, eight and 10), an increase of 13 percent since 2009, and 75.5 for science end-of-course, an increase of 15.3 percent.
Four of the district’s five elementary schools — Grand View, Pacific, Pennekamp and Robinson — scored above 93 percent in science.
“One of the reasons may be the incredible district wide focus on hands-on science instruction,” Seaton said.
Two years ago, the district started adding to each elementary school a science specialist to provide hands-on instruction that complements classroom curriculum.
Other results released by the CDE showed that 99 percent of Mira Costa High School 10th graders passed the math portion of the California High School Exit Exam and 98 percent passed the English-language arts portion.
The district’s API scores will be released to the public Sept. 9 and will be available on the CDE’s website.
In October, MBUSD plans to begin using a web program that will allow MBUSD teachers to share information that reports which students and classrooms are meeting state standards. The site will show everything from individual students’ scores to graphical analysis of classroom performance.
“They will also be able to see which teachers are doing well with the standards and find out what they are doing that’s working,” Seaton said.
The district plans to make the site accessible to parents in the future, she added.
“We never want to rest on our laurels and think we don’t have room to grow,” Seaton said. “We need to take time to look and see what these numbers mean. Even if 87 percent of students grew in one area, that means 13 percent didn’t. We still have to be concerned about that 13 percent. Where are they and how can we help them?”
For more information about the district’s test scores, visit www.cde.ca.gov.