More than half of students meet or exceed state standards for math and English Language Arts

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More than half of students meet or exceed state standards for math and English Language Arts

Press Release

October 2, 2018 (San Francisco, CA) - The California Department of Education (CDE) has released the results of the 2018 California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) for English Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics. Last spring, more than 28,000 SFUSD students in grades 3 to 8 and 11 took these state assessments.

California is now in its fourth year of the CAASPP testing program, and SFUSD student scores in English Language Arts continue to show an upward trend while student performance in math remains steady. For the second year in a row, SFUSD is the only large urban school district in the state, serving more than 50,000 students,  in which more than half its students met or exceeded Common Core Standards for both ELA (55.3 percent) and math (50.4 percent).

While the achievement gap persists, African American students’ overall proficiency rate increased in ELA at the elementary school level and in math at the high school level.

“These results are a testament to the hard work of our teachers, principals, and staff,” said SFUSD Superintendent Dr. Vincent Matthews. “We must celebrate that so many students are meeting or exceeding these challenging standards. We also need to urgently close  the achievement and opportunity gap that plagues our system by equitably focusing our resources to achieve better outcomes for our most underserved students.”

School and grade level results

Approximately 40 percent of schools in SFUSD ranked high to very high (as defined by the California School Dashboard) in both ELA and math. Further, 10 schools in the district have a proficiency rate above 75 percent in both ELA and math.

Nearly two dozen SFUSD schools showed 4-year consecutive upward trends in ELA or math, and 15 schools across the district increased in either or both ELA and math for African American students.

Students in grades 5, 8, 11, and 12 also participated in the field test of the new California Science Test (CAST), though there are no results available.

About CAASPP

*The CAASPP test was first implemented during the 2014-15 school year and replaced the Standardized Testing and Reporting System (STAR) test. CAASPP includes a number of assessments, but the most widely given are the Smarter Balanced Assessments (SBA), which evaluate student progress on the California standards in the mathematics and English Language Arts/literacy. CAASPP consists of two parts. The first is an adaptive test taken on a computer that gives students different follow-up questions based on their answers, thereby providing a more refined picture of a student’s abilities. The second is a performance task that challenges students to apply their knowledge and skills to real-world problems. The two parts measure depth of understanding, writing, research, and problem-solving skills. The CDE’s CAASPP results website contains the results broken down by grade, gender, ethnic groups, and demographics.

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Page updated on 10/02/18

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