High schools: Turnaround seen in test scores High schools: Turnaround seen in test scores (November 23, 2005)

** Concerted efforts behind the leap forward, administrators say.

By David Boyce

Almanac Staff Writer

Concern over running afoul of the federal No Child Left Behind Act was a preoccupation of administrators, teachers and parents in the Sequoia Union High School District last year, but it appears that students -- including those at Woodside and Menlo-Atherton high schools -- had another priority: doing well on state tests.

The higher test scores are a consequence of extra efforts put forth by both teachers and students, administrators said.

In an update of the statewide academic performance index -- a number on a 0-to-1,000-point scale derived from annual test results -- the Sequoia district's score rose 54 points, from 667 to 721, for the 2004-05 school year, according to results published in October by the state Department of Education. The district's API had risen just seven points in each of the previous two school years.

The scores at M-A and Woodside reflected the district's progress, with 54- and 55-point increases, respectively. The APIs for both schools had gone in the negative direction in the 2003-04 school year and had had single-digit advances in the year before that.

The latest results "reflect the concerted effort made by teachers and students to improve scores," said M-A Principal Norman Estrada in an e-mail message. "We constantly reminded the students of how important the test was."

"It's been a massive effort," said Margaret Williams, Woodside's vice principal for instruction. "I think we were just doing more across the board (and) I think you have to say that (the students) bought into it."

The state categorizes test results in subgroups that reflect students' ethnicity and economic circumstances. Subgroups that score below the state's target of 800 are given an improvement goal for the following year, typically five points.

Highlights at M-A this time around include African-American students, who added 103 points to their score; and students in the free or reduced-price lunch program or whose parents did not graduate from high school, who raised their score by 65 points. Both groups had lost ground in the previous year.

At Woodside, students on the federal lunch program improved their scores by 76 points, while Hispanic students' scores jumped 62 points. These groups, too, had negative scores in the year before.

The score for Woodside's Caucasian students rose above the state's 800-point target for the first time in the six years of published records. At M-A, this group of students has always scored above 800.
Feds: M-A lacking

At M-A, one damper on the good news is the failure to meet a numerical standard set by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The school did not make "adequate yearly progress" -- or AYP -- by federal standards because a handful of the 529 students tested did not reach the minimum target score for either the English or the math tests.

The act requires a minimum number of students to earn above-average scores. The threshold rises with each passing year until 2014, when 100 percent of students are expected to have above-average scores.

Test results show that five more M-A students categorized as learning the English language needed an above-average score on the English test and seven more needed better math scores.

M-A is appealing the decision, citing a data entry error, said Mr. Estrada.

In the previous year, M-A missed its AYP goal because a few students didn't show up on test days.

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