Students in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) had one of the largest percentage gains on standardized tests in the state compared to other California districts, although critics of the school system say the results are “poor” because Most students are not proficient in reading or mathematics.
Despite the academic gains, official LAUSD figures show that there are approximately 12,000 African American students who are below standard in mathematics and approximately 10,000 in English Language Arts (ELA).
For their part, there are 115,000 Latino students (26.37% of the total of 435,958 LAUSD students) who are below standard in mathematics and 95,000 lack adequate skills in English Language Arts (ELA).
Growth in LAUSD
Between the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 academic years, English Language Arts scores increased from approximately 41% of students meeting or exceeding standards to just over 43%.
Math scores also increased: In the 2022-2023 school year, 30.5% of LAUSD students met or exceeded state standards. In 2024, that figure grew to 32.83%.
Despite the gains, the educational gap between minority students such as African Americans and Latinos keeps tens of thousands of students lacking proficiency in both reading and mathematics.
That deficit has been dragging on for years in LAUSD, among minority students, when compared to white and Asian students, who have historically obtained higher academic achievement scores.
“School attendance is extremely important; We need the teachers and the children in our schools and the support of our parents,” Superintendent Alberto Carvalho told La Opinión. “They have to get involved in the education process.”
He added that parents have to benefit from vacation programs for the most needy students.
On the part of the school system, he added, school directors and teachers must continue with a professional educational level.
Carvalho said that in what people call learning loss during the pandemic, it had to be recognized that there was a significant drop.
Therefore, given the challenge that the district faces, he recalled that, together with the LAUSD School Board, they predicted that in two years they would begin to see a recovery to a level that would affect some subgroups and that would reach or exceed the levels prior to the pandemic.
“I am encouraged by the fact that students who historically performed at the lowest levels are actually those who have already surpassed pre-pandemic performance levels,” the superintendent said.
“It’s about reducing the achievement gap that empowers students through capital investments,” he said.
The impossible and inevitable
Among African American students there was a positive improvement of 0.5 percentage points from pre-pandemic years.
And when you look at English learners, there are about four percentage points higher than pre-pandemic levels.
Among students with disabilities, there was an increase of 1.6 points, and when priority schools were analyzed, the improvement is about one percentage point.
In third grade, the increase was 1.1 percentage points; for fourth graders, 1.2 percentage points; for 5th graders, an increase of 2.7 percentage points.
“No one thought this would be possible; that this number of subgroups, particularly representing historically underperforming student subgroups, would be the first to reach and exceed pre-pandemic levels,” said Superintendent Carvalho.
“This is another example of how the impossible becomes inevitable,” he added.
Carvalho added that LAUSD’s black and Latino students outperformed their counterparts statewide.
The educational gap persists
LAUSD Board of Directors President Jackie Goldberg expressed her satisfaction with the results of the state’s standardized tests.
However, she clarified: “I will not be satisfied if this is not the case again next year, because the objective has to be to continue reducing the gap.” [educativa]”.
With more than 40 years involved in the fight for better education, Goldberg said that the only way to reduce the gap is to exceed the objectives that are proposed.
“When we exceed the district average five times higher in reading and three times higher in math than the state average, that will mean we are closing the gap,” Goldberg said.
The president of the LAUSD School Board recognized that the educational gap has always mainly affected minorities and said that this is due, in large part, “to income [económicos]”.
“It is largely due to income, because in our district [5] many children of color come from families struggling to make ends meet. And that means parents can have a couple of jobs and they’re not at home helping them with their homework because they have to work just to keep the roof over their heads and that’s why we have extraordinary problems that our children deal with.”
“Poor scores”
Evelyn Alemán, organizer of the Facebook group Nuestra Voz/Our Voice, disagreed with that of school authorities, noting: “We cannot be satisfied with poor achievement scores in public education, especially for vulnerable and high-income student populations. needs”.
Alemán said that “there is no progress when the majority of our children do not meet state standards in basic subjects. “There is just an urgent call to steer this ship in a different direction.”
He expressed that Californians “have become too comfortable and tolerant with an educational system that points to external factors for its failure to adequately educate our children.”
He highlighted that Nuestra Voz, immigrant and indigenous parents want to see more investment in teacher development, transparency in student grades and policies and investments that reflect the needs of our families.
“They typically say they want to collaborate with nonprofits, but they don’t necessarily want to be criticized, but how are they going to improve if they don’t accept feedback?”
“The issue is that we have lowered the bar [bajado las expectativas] for the educational system; If in the state of California 31.2% of our children do not know how to read or understand mathematics, what future awaits them? The report of the percentages that they released is very vague…we would like to see all the data before celebrating.”
“Unacceptable levels”: CSBA
Vernon M. Billy, executive director of the California School Boards Association (CBSA), said that despite an overall increase of less than half a percentage point in English Language Arts (ELA) and less than one percentage point in Mathematics , overall student performance remains below pre-pandemic levels. “which were already unacceptable.”
“Our initial review of the 2023-24 state assessment results provides some evidence that leadership from local boards and superintendents produced positive results, but the rate of growth is simply not enough to achieve our goals. for the public education system,” he stated. “It is also not enough to provide all current students with the skills necessary for academic success.”
Less than half of all California students met grade-level standards in English and just over a third exceeded that standard in mathematics.
Scores remained essentially stable across the board in ELA, accompanied by progress in Mathematics for historically challenged groups such as African American students, Latino students, low-income students, and Native American students.
However, when working from extremely low levels of proficiency, gains of two percentage points, one percentage point, eight-tenths of a point, and six-tenths of a point, respectively, represent almost no change compared to the size of the achievement. to reduce the educational gap.
“At this rate, it will take several generations to bring these groups of students up to speed with their higher-achieving peers,” said Vernon M. Billy, who also expressed concern about whether schools can sustain their higher-performing interventions. effective once Covid-19 relief funds expire in January 2025.
In the state, school districts that showed improvements were: Benicia, Compton, Fallbrook Union, Los Angeles, Santa María Union, Tulare Joint Union High and others.