While acknowledging that the numbers are preliminary, Saugus Union School District governing board member Chris Trunkey said at last week’s meeting that the 2024 state testing numbers are “really positive.”
Two schools saw double-digit percentage increases in English, while one of those schools also saw a double-digit percentage increase in math, according to data presented at last week’s meeting.
The California Department of Education is set to release the full results on the California School Dashboard in December.
Board President Matt Watson praised the teachers in attendance — there were representatives from North Park and Cedarcreek elementary schools, the two schools with the largest increases in English and math — for their work in helping students to raise their achievement levels.
North Park had a 12.59% jump in students meeting the state standard in English and a 12.5% increase in math, while Cedarcreek rose 11.37% in English.
“We do have a couple of groups and one or two grade levels here or there that we still need to continue to work on,” Watson said, “but I see our team in the district office, our teams that are actually responsible for the growth that we’re seeing, our teachers and our other instructional staff that are in the classroom, being extremely systemic about looking at the data, looking at what our individual kids, as well as our groups of kids, need and working very hard, individually and collaboratively, to address those needs.”
Overall, the district saw 2.64% more students at least meet the standard in English than in the 2022-23 school year, jumping up to 66.39%, while 2.88% more students did so in math, rising to 62.12%. In science, there was a 2.34% increase, up to 56.19%.
In total, 10 of the 16 school sites saw increases in English and 11 saw increases in math.
Students in grades 3-6 take the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress in English and math, and students in fifth grade take the California Science Test.
The district also had increases in the number of students in historically underserved groups — students with disabilities, socioeconomically disadvantaged students or homeless students — who met the standard in English and math.
Students with disabilities had rate increases of nearly 4% in English and 7% in math, followed by socioeconomically disadvantaged students securing increases of more roughly 4% and 2.5% and homeless students garnering increases of 8% and 10%.
Carin Fractor, director of education services, said implementing the Professional Learning Community processes and systems has been a boon to the district.
“PLC is not just something that people can do. It’s not a one-off,” Fractor said. “It’s really a collective group, a collective work of an entire school, all the grade-level teams … really focusing on what is it that our students know, where are their gaps and how do we collectively look at the data, create interventional plans and support them as a collective whole.”
Charles Helmers Elementary was recognized earlier this year as a Model PLC by Solution Tree, a professional development company and publisher of educational material for K-12 educators, one of nearly 700 schools across the nation to earn that distinction.
“You can see the work that the teams are doing as they’ve been provided the time to come together and use that data to plan their instruction and change their instruction, as well as follow the training that they’re receiving,” said Edwin Clement, assistant superintendent of education services.
Board member Anna Griese wondered if it would be possible to look at the data for just the students who do not fall into one of the historically underserved groups, including English learners.
“I’m not a teacher, but the programs and the way that you’re teaching is going to be vastly different, right?” Griese said. “And you’d want to see if those students are increasing at the same rate or decreasing at the same rate to understand maybe what’s happening in those groups versus the other groups.”
Superintendent Colleen Hawkins said the state typically breaks the data down to look at those specific groups, as there is state funding directly tied to them, but she isn’t sure that data couldn’t be pulled.
Hawkins added that she is looking forward to what other data can be looked at when the state releases the results in full.
“I’ve always said real acknowledgement of that effort, real growth and significant showing of that, is what you’re starting to see as we continue to push that flywheel forward. And I think it’s from everybody,” Hawkins said.
