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Schools And Test Scores November 28, 2001

My professional partner, Charles Beavers, AIA, at Interactive Resources is an architect by day and a math education junkie and a nationally recognized expert on the subject by night. He has a website, http://www.intres.com/math/ , which provides more information than you would ever want to know on math education. The past few weeks he has been developing a new web site to help California parents, and the public in general, be informed about the quality of our schools. As a personal note, the test scores of each school continue to be roughly equivalent to the wealth and education of the parents. If you want your kids to attend a high scoring school, then move to a wealthy neighborhood or a neighborhood with lots of well-educated parents. Which are the best (highest scoring) schools in California? STAR Test Scores View school-by-school, district-by-district, and county-by-county comparisons of each STAR test at STARscores.com. The California Standardized Testing And Reporting (STAR) Program is the key component in the State of California's K-12 accountability program. The State of California reports detailed results from the tests on its web site. However, it is much easier to compare scores between schools, districts, and counties at this site. And isn't that the purpose? API Rankings View top-to-bottom API rankings of all schools in each county and each district at STARscores.com. The Academic Performance Index (API) is the result of the California Public School Accountability Act (PSAA). Its purpose is to summarize a school's academic performance to a single numerical index in order to make it easier to compare schools to one another and to measure a school's growth from year to year. The range of the numerical index (or scale) is from a low of 200 to a high of 1000. The interim goal of all California schools is to reach an API index of 800.

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