Page One

Results of the newly released public school test reports show that Berkeley Unified School District students continue to rank far above state testing scores in the California Standardized Test (STAR) in elementary school, but that advantage tends to evaporate as students enter the higher grades.  

At the same time, Berkeley Unified students’ scores rank slightly above the statewide average in the California High School Exit Exam. 

The results were released earlier this week by the California Department of Education. 

STAR results are used to determine federal school funding support under the No Child Left Behind Act, and this year, for the first time, the exit exam will be used as a requirement for high school graduation in the state. 

Exit exam results dropped significantly in the district and the state for socio-economically disadvantaged students, with Berkeley doing slightly worse than the county or the state. 

In Berkeley, 49 percent of such students passed both the math and English Language Arts portions of the exit exam. The results were 49 percent and 50 percent passage for the same two tests; in the state, the numbers were 50 percent and 51 percent.  

Lisa Rosenthal, senior editor of the GreatSchools.net website, which evaluates schools throughout California and the nation, said that there are good things and bad things to see in the test results. 

“Generally, test results are up all across the state, and that’s good,” Rosenthal said. 

The downside, she said, is that in order to bring the test scores up, many California schools are placing more emphasis on teaching those things which are being tested. 

“That means that we’ve had a de-emphasis on teaching in such areas as the arts, history, social science, and science,” she said. “That’s kind of sad when those programs suffer, because students need a well-rounded education.” 

She said that the state has plans to add history, social science, and science to the testing regimen in future years, and that schools will therefore almost certainly put more weight on those courses. 

Rosenthal also said that it was a positive sign that a majority of students statewide are passing the exit exam, adding that there appears to be a correlation between students not passing the test and not fulfilling other graduation requirements. 

“One of the fears about the exit exam was that it would be a gatekeeper, keeping some students by itself from graduation who had otherwise fulfilled all the other graduation requirements,” Rosenthal said. 

But she said that students who are not passing the exit exam are also generally not completing necessary course work in required subjects, or are not passing their classes, and so would not be able to graduate in any case. 

Rosenthal also said that there had been fear that California’s high school exit exam would increase the state’s dropout rate. 

“We can’t determine that as yet because of the weakness in the state’s reporting system,” she said, noting that although schools keep records of how many students have left their schools, they do not keep records of whether or not those students actually dropped out of school altogether or transferred to another school district. 

BUSD Public Information Officer Mark Coplan said that BUSD administrators have been in a management retreat at the Berkeley Marina over the past two days, and had not had the chance to analyze the test results. Coplan said that after a preliminary look, district officials “are pleased to see that the number of students passing the exit exam is higher than we originally anticipated.” 

Coplan said that “as in all tests, our numbers tend to be higher than the norm,” but added that “the district still needs to look at the areas where some of our kids are struggling. That’s where our focus needs to be.” 

In the California High School Exit Exam, 69 percent of the BUSD students passed the math portion of the exam, while 68 percent passed the English Language Arts portion. Results were 65 percent and 68 percent countywide, and 63 percent and 65 percent throughout the state. 

In his press statement announcing the test results, State Superintendent of Instruction Jack O’Connell noted the continued discrepancy in test scores, noting that “while the consistent growth of our subgroups across all measures should be celebrated, I am seriously concerned that our achievement gap remains unacceptably wide.” 

O’Connell added that “of particular concern are the overall results of our African-American and Hispanic/Latino students, as well as our English learners and special education students. While they have made impressive gains, we must seek extraordinary progress for those students in order to close the achievement gap that persists for all groups.”