BUSD and the CAASPP

The 2018 California Assessment of Student Proficiency and Performance (CAASPP) test scores were recently released by the California State Department of Education.

Unfortunately there were even fewer Bonsall High school students who met the state standards in language arts and math for the 2017/2018 school year than they did for the 2016/2017 school year.

The percentage of Bonsall 11th graders not meeting the state standards for both years is listed below (this indicates that even fewer Bonsall students are meeting state standards).

Content area 2017 2018

Reading 61.54% 67.61%

Writing 67.31% 76.06%

Overall Language Arts 30.77% 56.48%

Concepts and Procedures 74% 84.29%

Problem Solving& Data

Analysis 80% 84.39%

Overall Mathematics 58% 74.29%

While there are some who discount standardized test scores, they do matter. These are not just numbers and statistics that are thrown around. They are a strong indicator of student achievement of the state standards in various content areas. This allows the state to monitor student achievement, and is used by each district for adopting curriculum. Test results identify specific areas in which the students are not meeting the state standards.

In addition, the reporting of the state standardized test scores gives each school information about areas that need to be addressed academically. This could include evaluating the following: the educational model, adopted course curriculum, methodology and teaching strategies. Changes would have to be made in one of more of these areas in order to increase the number of students meeting the state standards.

These scores also help parents evaluate a school’s overall performance when making a decision about school placement. Some parents will transfer their student to other districts for high school. Some will elect home schooling, private school, charter school or on-line education. Parents have a right to know how their school is performing.

Jan Patterson