SRVUSD officials talk CAASPP scores, student success strategies

San Ramon Valley school leaders discussed the latest insights into student success rates and assessment outcomes at the district’s most recent board meeting ahead of the holiday break and following the release of state standardized testing results last month, which show a slight overall decline during the past year and a dramatic drop at one local high school.

The topic came to the board early on at the Nov. 14 meeting, as part of a report on the district’s strategic direction on deep learning and innovation, which included a review of local scores for the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) assessment, with the latest results made public by the state’s Department of Education in October.

The report was presented by Deb Petish, executive director of curriculum and instruction for the San Ramon Valley Unified School District, who pointed to a number of developments in the district’s process of reviewing and adapting to student success metrics in their quest for the best learning outcomes possible.

“Traditionally we had a set goal at the beginning of the year, and we evaluate the success or lack thereof at the end of the year,” Petish said. “That’s how we did things. Now we do things in shorter bursts.”

In particular, Petish pointed to the district’s recently developed data dashboard, of which the presentation’s topic – deep learning and innovation – was one of the three categories measured and monitored for performance as part of the district’s strategic directions.

The deep learning and innovation category is aimed at measuring college and career readiness and satisfactory progress in English and language arts (ELA) and mathematics, with data from sources including CAASPP measurements as well as other metrics for evaluating math and language arts success, as well as ACT and SAT scores aimed at providing insight into college and career readiness.

Petish noted that the district saw an overall decline of 2% in English and language arts proficiency, according to CAASPP scores, which dropped from 80% to 78% over the past year.

“We still greatly outperformed the state of California who’s at 47% and the county which is at 50%,” Petish added.

Third through fifth grade scores in SRVUSD dropped from 79% to 78% overall, with secondary grade scores dropping from 81% to 78%. This consisted of a 5% drop in eighth grade scores from 81% to 76% and a 3% decrease in 11th grade scores, from 83% to 80%.

“I will say that the decline in eighth grade was fairly consistent across our middle schools,” Petish said. “The decline in 11th grade was mainly due to one of our high schools.”

The high school in question was San Ramon Valley High School in Danville, which saw a 17% decline in English and language arts scores on the CAASPP and a 16% decline in math proficiency scores – a topic that trustees and Petish discussed at the end of her presentation.

Scores for underserved students overall remained consistent at 56% compared with the overall 78% average in the district. Students with disabilities maintained the same proficiency rate of 40% between 2022 and 2023, as did socioeconomically disadvantaged students, with English language learners showing a 1% increase in proficiency from 29% in 2022 to 30% in 2023.

“Our secondary scores overall declined, most markedly in grades 8 and 11,” Petish said. “But though there are fluctuations across secondary, our students tend to, even when you look longitudinally, they tend to reach 80% proficiency by 11th grade. And again the gap continues between overall SRVUSD performance and the performances of most of our underserved groups.”

Actions for the upcoming year based on the latest ELA assessment data are set to consist of expanding the science of reading program into third through fifth grade classes, as well as expanding and refining the use of assessment and intervention techniques in order to narrow down areas that need attention and ensure consistent support through elementary schools, plus additional professional development, screening, and appropriate interventions to address the reduction of proficiency rates in secondary grades over the past year.

Other actions for the upcoming year include monitoring changes aimed at improving outcomes for English Language learners, professional development aimed at special education educators, intervention strategies throughout the school day as well as before and after school hours, and diversifying literature.

On the math front, actions over the past year included interventions to support students based on screening results, professional development aimed at improving student engagement, and professional development for math paraeducators.

According to CAASPP data, student proficiency in math went up by 1% in third through fifth grades. Third grade scores remained the same at 82%, with fourth grade scores going down by 2% from 80% to 78%. Fifth grade scores increased from 73% to 78%.

In secondary grades, proficiency dropped a percentage point from 68% to 67%. This varied across grade levels however, with sixth grade scores dropping from 68% to 67%, seventh grade scores increasing from 69% to 71%, eighth grade scores holding steady at 68% and 11th grade scores dropping from 67% to 60%.

Underserved groups overall went from a 46% proficiency rate to a 48% proficiency rate. Math proficiency for students with disabilities dropped from 35% to 34%, with English language learner proficiency increasing from 35% to 38% and socioeconomically disadvantaged students increasing proficiency slightly, from 46% to 47%.

“Math at the secondary level has really been if not our highest priority then one of our highest priorities,” Petish said. “Because we know students really struggle with math, we also know our teachers are working extremely hard, we hear a lot from parents about the need for support in math. So it’s something that we want to acknowledge, something that we’ve been working very very hard on.”

Actions to improve math outcomes over the next year include mandatory professional development for secondary math teachers, math intervention teachers at Title I sites, and a review of secondary math curriculum materials.

With SRVHS seeing the most dramatic decreases in CAASPP scores across the district, Petish said that addressing the reasons behind this and looking for solutions had been front and center for both her office and for SRVHS principal Whitney Cottrell.

“The first thing she did was try to figure out what some of the underlying causes were, because there’s conflicting information – their AP scores, they just made the AP Honor Roll for example, their SAT scores, their grades, their kids are getting into great colleges,” Petish said. “So she held many different focus groups with many different types of students and she said ‘what happened,’ and some said ‘I worked hard on it; I’m not sure what happened’ but others said ‘why should i care about that.'”

“They say ‘this is not something like the SAT or AP that is going to impact my college admittance,’ and so maybe some kids didn’t take it as seriously,” Petish continued. “With that being said, as the director of curriculum and instruction I take it very seriously with regard to how we’re going to support that site and that principal and those teachers in improving those scores.”

Petish said that site-specific actions at SRVHS consisted of emphasizing the importance of CAASPP testing to students, as well as increasing professional development opportunities for teachers. She added that Cottrell would be sharing the data with parents and caregivers, and that she would be inviting them to an upcoming meeting to hear additional input.

However, Petish emphasized that the problem was more complex than lack of motivation from SRVHS students, and that it was a top priority for her office to address as well as SRVHS administration.

Area 5 Trustee Shelley Clark said that CAASPP testing at SRVHS had a long and tumultuous history, and had been the center of numerous debates over the years, extending back to her children’s time as students there.

“I think it’s more complicated than just simply that some of the kids didn’t take it seriously,” Clark said. “I think that is a factor because I saw that going on there when I was there. At some point the CAASPP scores were put on their transcripts, so then if you got one on a transcript and it wasn’t a good score then you may have to do remediation in college on your math, and that set off a whole firestorm at that time because then parents didn’t want it on the transcript. So there’s been a lot of back and forth at that particular site from my experience.”

Clark added that while she agreed that it was a serious issue for the district to address, the underlying factors were complicated.

“I don’t think that one test is an accurate representation of the knowledge and mastery of the students at that school through my many years of being a parent there and being involved,” Clark said. “So I think it’s more than one thing and we need to of course take steps to rectify and to educate and to do whatever we need to do to bring the scores up, but I think there are some cultural things we need to work on too at that particular site.”