By Sara Ballenger
The Los Altos School District is seeing stars. The district presented its 2002 Standardized Testing and Recording (STAR) examination results to its board of trustees at a special meeting, Aug. 12.
The STAR test scores are based on national norms using the 50th percentile as the average. The STAR test is a standardized state test used to evaluate California schools. Students are tested in reading, math, language and spelling, with 28 possible subtests.
The district’s national percentile score on the Stanford Achievement Test, Ninth Edition, (SAT 9), in mathematics is 94; language, 92; reading, 88; and spelling, 88.
“I was delighted to see that our students performed at the same level as they did last year,” said Superintendent Marge Gratiot. “Especially pleasing to me were the high percentages of students classified as ‘advanced’ and “proficient’ in both math and reading/language arts. Our academic program is very solid.”
One of the strongest areas of improvement in this year’s test scores were in mathematics. According to the district, on average, students in the fourth through eighth grades scored in the 92nd percentile in mathematics; the sixth grade scored in the 96th percentile.
The average LASD student continued to perform in the top 20 percent in every subtest at every grade and at every school, according to the district.
“There is very little difference from one district school to another in each subtest area at every grade,” the district’s report said. “Achievement levels across content areas and across grades is similar. Not only is there a consistency between schools and content areas when looking at this year’s results, but when comparing test results of 2002 with those of 2001, the scores remain very flat, yet at an exceptionally high level.”
The district’s results come on the heels of an announcement by the California Department of Education that it has delayed the official release of this year’s statewide STAR results.
Originally scheduled for release Aug. 15, the complete 2002 STAR test results, including data by school, district, county and state, will be available Aug. 29.
The delay is due to the Los Angeles Unified School District’s not returning approximately 250,000 STAR test documents to the state’s scoring contractor in time.
“This represents 5 percent of the total student enrollment for the state, enough to affect the aggregate statewide results of student achievement,” said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin.
Without any statewide data for comparison, the district can only see how it fared compared to last year.
“When the statewide data is shared, we will know state and county averages,” said Patricia Boettcher, assistant superintendent of curriculum. “The scores and background data will probably be analyzed in October and we will receive our school and district Academic Performance Index scores at that time.”
Boettcher sees the STAR test results as just one measure of the district’s success in educating its students.
A school’s API ranking is based on students’ collective scores on the Star and Stanford Achievement Test Form 9 tests and is meant to indicate how well a school performs statewide. For more information, logon to http://star.cde.ca.gov.
