Only 16 percent of Santa Maria-Bonita School District students met or exceed standard proficiency in math on the 2021-22 state assessments, and only 26 percent of students did the same for language arts.
That’s a drop from 2018-19’s scores of 35 percent and 26 percent, respectively, district Instructional Services Director Laurie Graack said.
“It’s in line with what we are seeing across the state and large districts. We are seeing anywhere from 4 percent to 12 percent drops; our performance mirrors what’s happening across the state,” Graack said.
This is the first time California’s conducted its standardized test since 2019, as the state Board of Education suspended mandatory testing during the pandemic, according to the Santa Barbara County Education Office.
“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,” Education Office officials said in a statement.
Statewide, average test scores dropped by 4 percent in language arts (from 51 percent in 2018-19 to 47 percent in 2021-22) and 7 percent in math (40 percent to 33 percent), according to the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress data.
At a county level, there was a similar drop from from 47 percent to 41 percent in language arts, and an 8 percent drop in math from 36 percent to 28 percent, demonstrating COVID-19’s impact on learning at all levels. Santa Maria-Bonita’s Graack recognized that her district is still further behind than its larger counterparts and has a lot of room for improvement.
“I do think we have a particularly challenging mission in front of us,” Graack said. “We have one of the largest migrant enrollment amounts in the state, dealing with students that move frequently, and every move causes a disruption in learning.”
Santa Maria-Bonita also has one of the largest percentages—nearly 15 percent—of Mixteco-speaking families in the state, which makes it difficult to communicate with students and parents because the language has several dialects and is very rarely written, she said.
“There are unique challenges in our system, but we need to do a better job of aligning our system and supporting our students so they can get a high quality education,” Graack said.
Absenteeism, mental health and physical health issues, transportation issues, language barriers, and parent involvement all play a critical role to a student’s success, and addressing those first could help improve test scores in the long run, she said.
As a result, the district’s invested in professional learning and supports for teachers including coaches, providing more leadership and administrative supports, conducting more parent education and outreach, and expanding summer school and after school learning programs for kids in hopes to make improvements for student success, she added.
“I think for me and our district, the concern is [to make sure] that students have all the underlying supports they need in order to access the curriculum. Academic achievement is one outcome factor we can easily measure, but there are so many inputs,” Graack said. “We are much more concerned on the student experience and the student’s feeling of success than we are on the immediacy of the academic testing by the state.”
This article appears in Nov 3-9, 2022.
