Has student improvement plateaued in California? New Dashboard shows modest gains

California’s K-12 students showed moderate progress academically last year, with some bright spots but otherwise plateauing after years of post-pandemic improvements, according to the new California School Dashboard released today.

Chronic absenteeism, discipline rates and progress among English learners all remained mostly unchanged, with slight improvements. Academic performance improved , but still lagged behind pre-pandemic levels.

The Dashboard is a user-friendly, color-coded guide for the public to understand schools’ performance. Schools get credit for their students’ scores, but also for how much progress they’ve made — a metric that some have said can be misleading . The dashboard assigns colors to reflect schools’ performance, with blue being the best and red triggering interventions from the state. Last year was the first year all categories earned a yellow or green, indicating improvement.

“Seeing modest improvements on every Dashboard indicator should encourage us to deepen our investments in every child’s progress,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said. “We must not rest until all students’ outcomes represent their brilliance and potential.”

College and career readiness a bright spot

A highlight was college and career readiness, with a record-high number of students graduating last year prepared for college and the job market.

Nearly 52% of last year’s crop of graduating seniors satisfied the requirements to attend a public university in California or completed a 2-to-4-year career pathway. The number was up 3.1% over the previous year, bringing the overall total to its highest level since the state introduced the dashboard almost a decade ago.

California has been promoting career pathways in high schools for years, providing money and guidance for schools to train students in health care, engineering, environmental science, agriculture and other careers. Typically, students take a sequence of career-themed courses linked to their academic work, often combined with out-of-school internships or classes at local community colleges.

Last year, nearly 27% of students completed a career pathway, up about 1 percentage point from the previous year.

College readiness also improved, but that was partly because the state now includes completion of Advanced Placement courses among its measurements. Last year, 55% of students took at least one AP class.

Record-high graduation rate

The graduation rate also hit its highest level — 88% — since the Dashboard was introduced in 2017, when the rate was about 83%.

“Today’s Dashboard results show California continuing to make important strides in post-pandemic recovery — we’re getting more students reengaged in the classroom, graduating students in greater numbers, and getting more of them prepared for college and careers,” California State Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond said in a statement.

Slight improvement in absenteeism 

But other dashboard measurements were lackluster. Chronic absenteeism, for example, which soared to 30% during the pandemic, fell only 1 percentage point last year. After several years of steep declines, the rate all but stalled at just over 19%. Before the pandemic, about 11% of students were chronically absent, which means they missed 10% or more of the school year.

The Los Angeles wildfires and a surge in immigration raids are among the reasons for the stalled progress in attendance, said Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, a research and policy organization. Thousands of students missed school due to the fires, while others stayed away due to fears of deportation.

"I'm not surprised," Chang said. "It's a sign that we need a statewide game plan to address attendance. I also think this will require perseverance over time."

Schools that prioritized personal relationships with families tended to have better attendance, she said. Attendance also improved at schools that identified individual students who needed assistance getting to school every day and then provided that assistance.

English learner progress was also stagnant, with only 46.4% of students making progress toward English language proficiency. The number increased less than 1% from last year.

Big improvements in Dinuba

Dinuba Unified, a rural district southeast of Fresno, was among the state’s bright spots. The 6,000-student district, where a third of students are English learners and more than 85% are low-income, saw across-the-board improvements last year. English language arts test scores soared more than 10 percentage points, math scores jumped nearly 6 percentage points, and the graduation rate topped 95%.

District administrators attributed the success to low staff turnover and grant funding that allows teachers ample time to prepare lesson plans, collaborate and understand new curriculum, particularly in math. The newly rebuilt high school also has popular career pathways, including construction management and transportation, which entice students to stay in school and graduate, said Lisa Benslay, the district’s director of intervention.

“Our mission is to end generational poverty through education,” Benslay said. “People have really bought into that. They see the need, and feel a moral conviction.”

Funding expires

Statewide, students’ performance tanked during the pandemic, when most schools closed for in-person learning, but rebounded significantly the past few years. The state and federal government poured billions into programs to help students recover, such as tutoring, after-school and summer programs, mental health counseling and enticements meant to boost attendance.

But that money largely expired last year, and schools have had to cut many of those programs. Some are also getting less money from the state due to declining enrollment.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.