SBCEOBy the Santa Barbara County Education Office (SBCEO)
Student test score data newly released today by the California Department of Education illuminates the impact of the pandemic on student academic performance. The test scores show last spring’s results in math and English Language Arts on the 2021-22 California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP).
This is the first year of CAASPP testing results since 2019, as the State Board of Education suspended mandatory testing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the exceptional circumstances of the past three years, comparisons between 2019 and 2022 results are challenging, and highlight the need to consider this year’s data as a new baseline.
Santa Barbara County school districts have had access to individual students’ results since earlier this school year and have been using the data to provide extra support to students and to modify systems of intervention provided at each school. Student scores in grades 3-8 and 11 are categorized into four achievement levels, indicating whether that performance has exceeded, met, nearly met, or did not meet the standard.
The test results serve as a compass, a general idea of how students performed on a summative assessment on mathematics and English Language Arts, explained Santa Barbara County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Susan Salcido. “As educators, we look at this annual assessment in combination with more frequent, local, in-class assessments to provide personalized instruction that helps each student advance in their learning.”
As anticipated, the results both at the state and county levels show that the pandemic thwarted some of the progress schools had made prior to the pandemic. For Santa Barbara County as a whole, the number of students meeting or exceeding standard declined by about the same percentage as the state:
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The percentage of students meeting or exceeding standard in English Language Arts (ELA) dropped about 6 percentage points (from 47% in 2018/19 to 41% in 2021/2022)
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The percentage of students meeting or exceeding standard in math declined by about 8 percentage points (from 36% in 2018/19 to 28% in 2021/2022)
Statewide, the percentage of students meeting or exceeding standard in ELA declined by 4 percentage points and declined in math by 7 percentage points when compared to pre-pandemic results. The CDE Press Release is linked here.
“The data underscores the extraordinary disruption the pandemic caused on student learning and growth, and the critical importance of face-to-face, in-person instruction,” Superintendent Salcido said. “Now is the time to accelerate our efforts on every front; we are focused on targeted interventions, adapting, expanding, and accelerating services to meet and exceed the supports that are essential to our students’ long-term success.”
The Santa Barbara County Education Office is working closely with local school districts on a variety of fronts to enhance learning and academic performance. This includes: expanding preschool enrollment; supporting the rollout of transitional kindergarten (TK); providing professional learning and planning support for childcare staff, teacher teams, and administrators; and increasing access to mental health and wellness resources for students, families and school staff across the county.
The CAASPP test scores alone display only a portion of student performance and school accountability. For example, with the first grading period of this school year coming to a close, teachers will be communicating through parent conferences and report cards the progress and growth students have made in the months since students took these tests. Later this year, the 2022 California School Dashboard will provide additional data with the release of state and local measures of absenteeism, graduation rates, suspension rates, and English learner progress. The new Dashboard data is expected to be public by the end of December.
Assessment results for the CAASPP and ELPAC are available to the public on the Test Results for California’s Assessments website.
To provide essential background and factors to consider when interpreting California’s 2021–22 statewide assessment results, the CDE created the Interpretation Guide to the 2021–22 Statewide Assessment Results, which can be found on the CDE California Assessment Results News Release web page.
NAEP results, including those for California and all other states, are available on The Nation’s Report Card website.
Shows you what most home schoolers accomplish.
“We need to do a better job. Just trust me.”
We should refuse to “consider this year’s data as a new baseline.” Our pre-pandemic results were already unacceptably terrible. There is nothing in our kids that makes them responsible for or deserving of our school system’s atrocious outcomes, and for that reason we should never let Hilda & Co. celebrate anything other than dramatically new and divergent successes in how our kids are doing.
“There is nothing in our kids that makes them responsible for or deserving of our school system’s atrocious outcomes…”
Really? The subjects, the partners in education, the STUDENTS, have NOTHING to do with outcomes?!
It’s going to take a long time to fully evaluate the damage done by the policies implemented in our state in response to covid. Unfortunately, our children bore the brunt of the disruptions and have been harmed tremendously. In the end, we gave up on all the restrictions and pivoted to letting covid run its course. Were the “lockdowns” worth it?
No, no they were not worth it. Not even by a long-shot. Many very experienced, educated, and intelligent people, “experts” if you will, tried to warn us. But they were censored, dismissed, ridiculed and fired for it, and all of society paid a very expensive price as a result. Worth another read, amazing how it is exactly what we’re finally doing two+ years later: https://gbdeclaration.org/
Good link voice, I remember when they came out with that declaration. Their viewpoint prevailed in the end. So much went wrong during the covid response from the failed “lockdowns” to the suppression of the “lab leak” theory which has since turned out to be highly plausible. I would suggest putting safeguards in place to protect free speech and the right of the people to peaceably assemble, but the first amendment already covers that and somehow it didn’t do us any good. I think that’s a wake up call that we need to stop taking civil liberties for granted.
The government arrested lone fisherman on the beach and even a paddle surfer by himself in the ocean, and so many accepted it. It was simply scary how many were so willingly, eager even, to give up their rights and freedoms for the perception of safety. Scarier still how many so easily condemned others, wanted them fired, to loose access to healthcare or worse, for not taking a shot that the manufacture/cdc/fda knew wasn’t going to stop transmission.
3:36 – What is meant by “loose access”. Shoelaces untied? Also, you still don’t understand a thing about vaccines, do you?
“The government arrested lone fisherman on the beach and even a paddle surfer by himself in the ocean, and so many accepted it.” – Show us where/when that happened.
Ah, yes. The fraudulent “Great Barrington Declaration”. Funny how the ignorant antivaxxers always dredge up that sewage.
https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-barrington-declaration-an-open-letter-arguing-against-lockdown-policies-and-for-focused-protection/
Relevant quote from Dr Michael Head, Senior Research Fellow in Global Health, University of Southampton
“The Barrington Declaration is based upon a false premise – that governments and the scientific community wish for extensive lockdowns to continue until a vaccine is available. Lockdowns are only ever used when transmission is high, and now that we have some knowledge about how best to handle new outbreaks, most national and subnational interventions are much ‘lighter’ than the full suppressions we have seen for example in the UK across the spring of 2020.
“Those behind the Barrington Declaration are advocates of herd immunity within a population. They state that “Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal”, with the idea being that somehow the vulnerable of society will be protected from ensuing transmission of a dangerous virus. It is a very bad idea. We saw that even with intensive lockdowns in place, there was a huge excess death toll, with the elderly bearing the brunt of that, and 20-30% of the UK population would be classed as vulnerable to a severe COVID-19 infection. Around 8% of the UK population has some level of immunity to this novel coronavirus, and that immunity will likely wane over time and be insufficient to prevent a second infection. A strategy for herd immunity would also promote further inequalities across society, for example across the Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities. The declaration also ignores the emerging burdens of ‘long COVID’. We know that many people, even younger populations who suffered from an initially mild illness, are suffering from longer-term consequences of a COVID-19 infection.”
Peoples ability to memory hole things that actually happened is both amazing and scary. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-03/paddle-boarder-arrested-in-malibu-after-flouting-coronavirus-closures
Oh yeah…. forgot about that. OK, you got one. Thanks for actually supporting your claim with evidence. Good job!
People who oppose public health measures have an amazing and scary propensity to ignore facts and continually spray false propaganda at every opportunity.
The Chip and VOR agnotogenesis show is in town!
I had really enjoyed not seeing the tired, repeated, repeated, repeated, repeated one-sided debates about whether lockdowns were “worth it” *eye roll* and here we are again, ugh. Can we just…not?
Students from Santa Barbara and throughout the state of CA ate it academically during the Covid shutdowns forced by our state’s top health officials, governor Newsom, teachers unions, and other high level admin types in our state’s education system. The numbers shouldn’t be at all surprising. CA is performing very poorly in terms of our kids’ education. Yes, what’s done is done, so what can you do? Maybe keep alert if/when this kind of bs rears it’s ugly head again, and know who you’re voting for at every election.
The kids were NEVER the spreaders nor at significant risk for Covid morbidity or mortality.
That bit about children not being significant spreaders is false.
My niece and nephew both homeschool and I can tell you that their test scores are better than the average kid in school. They are being taught more intently and tracked more frequently and able to get more personalized help as they needed it than our kids that are at school with teachers who are overwhelmed and the student-to-teacher ratio is too high. These are not results from homeschooled kids, they are results from kids that need better education opportunities in our public school system. Educate yourself!
The pre-Covid numbers were unacceptable to begin with and after covid is NOT unexpected. Improvements need to be made, we need to follow more of a European example and have MORE instruction by having a longer school year (summer does NOT need to be 3 months break, shorten it to 5-6 weeks) and higher standards for learning. The scores of 47% and 36% were already too low!!!
“The percentage of students meeting or exceeding standard in English Language Arts (ELA) dropped about 6 percentage points (from 47% in 2018/19 to 41% in 2021/2022)
The percentage of students meeting or exceeding standard in math declined by about 8 percentage points (from 36% in 2018/19 to 28% in 2021/2022)”
Voice of reason you are just that. Thank you for leveling out these posts. I for one am starting to see that I have been lied to and feeling I really need to look deeper into what others have been saying. I need to open my eyes a little wider and think maybe some of these thing people call misinformation my actually be real. I’m willing to venture out of my comfort zone that my government is there for me. So thank you.
@lovesbalot: Interesting that Hilda has no money for intensive summer interventions yet has plenty for more and more expensive staffers downtown.
All: MOST kids and their parents did NOT want in-person school during the height of the pandemic. Some very vocal parents loudly clamored for this but I believe they are a minority. Even in the Spring of 2021, when vaccines were available and the pandemic was not nearly as bad as it was during 2020, after in-person school restarted a third of students at my kids’ high school stayed home, and teachers had to do that horrible bi-modal teaching. I believe that even if schools stayed open the whole time there would have been only a quarter or a third of the kids attending in person schooling in the fall and winter of 2020 – 2021. I also believe, but could not prove, that there would have been a higher number of needless deaths in the county because of kids bringing the virus home.