State Releases Test Results in English and Math

This is a press release from the Humboldt County Office of Education:

The state Department of Education released The California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) testing results and Humboldt County has made marginal gains in our CAASPP scores in English Language Arts and in Mathematics, compared to last year.

Overall, 44.5% of Humboldt County students in grades 3-8 and 11 met or exceeded standards in English Language Arts, which reflects a 1.25% growth over the prior year and a higher growth rate than the state increase of .99%. There were particularly large improvements in Grade 6 (4.8%), Grade 7 (2.23%) and Grade 11 (3.17%). Smaller, but notable improvements in Grade 4 and Grade 5, are also reflected.

In math, over 32% of students met or exceeded standards compared to 39% at the state level. Despite our overall continued growth in Humboldt County of .54%, our overall results remain below the state average.

Many specific student populations saw increases in both English Language Arts and Mathematics over the prior year including the Economically Disadvantaged, American Indian, Asian, Hispanic, White, Students with Disabilities, and Multiple Race groups.

Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Chris Hartley states, “Humboldt County schools and districts are utilizing this achievement data to identify specific areas for growth, target specific professional development, and develop strategies to support increased student performance.”

CAASPP replaces the previous Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) system and consists of the Smarter Balanced Summative Assessments, which measure growth to track students’ progress through the grade levels.

This is the fifth year of the Smarter Balanced ELA and Math computer-based tests, which includes a computer adaptive assessment and a performance task.

The computer assessment provides a wider range of questions tailored to identify the knowledge and skills they have mastered whereas the performance task challenges students to demonstrate critical thinking and problem solving, and to apply their knowledge and skills to real-world problems.

California updated its standards and built matching assessments to shift student learning toward skills that are more complex and that include more rigorous college and career-ready standards than previous state testing.

“It is encouraging that student performance on the CAASPP is improving overall; however being below the state average is not an acceptable level of achievement,” states Hartley. “I’m confident in our collective commitment to improve and the Humboldt County Office of Education is fully committed to assisting all schools and districts in the continuous process of improvement, fostering meaningful collaboration, and providing support for educators, students, and our community.”

The computer-based tests also include support for English Learners and students with special needs, allowing these students the ability to effectively demonstrate their knowledge and skills – critical information for classroom teachers.

Individual school and district CAASPP results are available on the California Department of Education website.

If there are questions about individual student results, please contact the site administrator at your child’s school. General questions can be directed to Lori Breyer, School Accountability and Assessment Coordinator at (707) 445-7019 or [email protected].