It would be great to celebrate in a big way the improvement in test scores in the Los Angeles Unified School District. And it is something worth celebrating. State standardized test scores improved at every grade level tested (third through eighth grade and 11th grade) and in both math and English. More students are at the proficient level, and more significantly, those who have not reached the proficient level are getting closer.
Undoubtedly, most of the credit goes to teachers, who have worked hard to bring students up to speed after the pandemic shut down schools for more than a year. Not only did students suffer significant learning losses during online education, but their mental health also suffered and behavioral issues became more common in classrooms. It's not easy.
That's encouraging, but it's not time to celebrate loudly that all is well. For the most part, scores are not back to what they were before the pandemic. And they weren't acceptable back then, either. Before the pandemic, nearly 44% of students were proficient in English and 34% in math. This year, it was 43% in English and nearly 33% in math.
District leaders should investigate what kinds of interventions helped the most. Was it the in-person after-school tutoring that many teachers offered? Could it have been in part the Primary Promise, the intensive help that children through third grade have received in some schools, delivered in small groups by specialist teachers? The district should examine whether it is a mistake to move away from that popular program.
Of course, standardized test scores aren’t the only reason for student success, and it’s good to be past the years of No Child Left Behind, when schools feared their scores for fear of being targeted for mandatory interventions, including takeovers. There are many reasons students might do poorly on one of the state’s annual exams: indifference that the tests don’t count toward grades, a bad day, or the way the tests are worded.
It is also not yet known how schools fared statewide because those scores have not yet been released. Context and comparison are important.
Still, the scores are an important, if broad, indicator of how things are going academically. With a significantly lower percentage of LAUSD students scoring proficient, the signs are clear that much more work is needed in the coming years, especially considering that one of the district’s goals is to have many more students qualify for Cal State or the University of California.
Other measures will be used in the coming years to examine district success. For example, Los Angeles Unified has been a national leader in offering specialized schools that attract students and prepare them for fulfilling careers, such as the school that actor George Clooney helped found to train people for jobs in the film and entertainment industry and to provide internships and a job network. That school is too new to have shown results yet, but the district should examine the outcomes of its specialized and technical school graduates.
The district's new initiative to teach some subjects through video games could be another success, along with many other new programs being introduced by Superintendent Alberto Carvalho. Its energy and scope deserve praise, but the key to success is to assess what works and what doesn't, and then track the results. Too often in the past, Los Angeles Unified has introduced well-intentioned plans but never tested whether they worked.
All that said, the reason for the universal improvement in math and English over the past year seems clear: teachers. Programs can be tremendously helpful, but ultimately, learning is about teachers doing their best with the students in their classrooms. It seems that Los Angeles Unified teachers did very well this past academic year, and for that, they deserve absolute praise.
