Report Card: Academic Gains, Funding Woes for West County Schools
Public schools in West Contra Costa County have shown steady academic gains in the past eight years, but steep budget cuts continue to hamstring the school district's efforts, according to latest State of the District report.
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The good news for West Contra Costa public schools is that academic performance scores have been rising steadily for the past decade, and there have been substantial increases in the percentages of students completing college-prep courses and going on to college and technical schools after high school.
The bad news is that budget cuts have increased class sizes, curtailed employee compensation and threaten further damage to the district's progress.
Those messages were delivered recently by the West Contra Unified School District superintendent, Bruce Harter, to the El Cerrito City Council in a special "State of the West Contra Costa Unified School District" presentation.
"Scary" economic roller coaster
"We really are in a whole new kind of gridlock," Harter said. "It's called political gridlock that we see across the nation and we also see here in California as well. And we all feel like we've been on a kind of economic roller coaster — sort of a scary ride rather than a fun ride, that's for certain.
The weak economy and continued high unemployment levels are having a direct impact on the 29,000-student district, Harter said.
The number of students on the free/reduced lunch has increased by about 1,100 over the past years, even though total enrollment decreased by about 5,000 in the same period, he said.
Changes is enrollment numbers, ethnic mix
Total student enrollment also could be compared to roller coaster, falling in a "slippery slide" from more than 41,000 in 1969 over the next 15 years down to a low of about 26,000, Harter said. It then experienced a steady climb over ensuing two decades to reach about 35,000 in 2003 before reversing again and falling steadily to the current 29,215, he said. (A graph showing the enrollment changes can be seen in the second slide of the group of attached slides from Harter's presentation.)
But the enrollment drop is expected to stop with a stable student population predicted for the next decade, Harter told the council at its Oct. 17 meeting.
"The good news is that our demographer says for the next 10 years we're going to be pretty stable," he said. "We're looking at about 29,000 students for the next 10 years. That means we're going to have stability in terms of our schools and that we are about right size to where we need to be for our buildings."
The ethnic make-up of students also has seen a significant shift in the past two decades, he said.
"Our population has changed a lot," he said, noting that the largest group, Latino students, make up 48 percent of the students today, up from 20 percent in the 1991-92 school year. The following table shows the changes for different groups:
| Year | Latino | African-Am | White | Asian | Filipino |
| 2011-12 | 48% | 21% | 13% | 12% | 6% |
| 1991-92 | 20% | 35% | 26% | 13% | 6% |
The language spoken at home by students also reflects the district's "enormous diversity," Harter said. "We have about 10,000 of our students out of the 29,000 whose home language in Spanish." The other languages I have there are all under a thousand. Among the several other home languages spoken by more than 100 students each range from about 750 for Filipino down to about a hundred for Hindi, with 65 other home languages spoken by smaller numbers, he said.
Steady gains in academic performance
"Our academic performance has gone up steadily over the last eight years," Harter said, displaying a slide showing the district's Academic Performance Score rising from 590 in 1992 to 710 this year. "We've very pleased at moving in the right direction even if we'd like the trend to be a little bit steeper than what it is in this graph."
"A lot of that has to do with our teachers," he said. "The quality of the teachers is seven times more important than any other factor in schooling for children."
He also reported substantial progress in college preparation among students, particularly in completing the so-called "A-G" courses with a 2.0 grade point average (GPA) required for admission to the University of California and California State University systems. Those completing the A-G classes upon graduation have almost tripled in five years.
"We relentlessly talk to students about 15 big classes that they need," Harter said. "These are the classes that are required for the UC/CSU. ... We're real delighted to see we've tripled the number of our graduates who have completed those basic A-G classes over the last five years. That represents about 40 percent of our graduates."
Current projections show the figure rising above 50 percent for the class of 2012, he said.
In the high school graduating class of 2011, more than 80 percent went off to two-year or four-year colleges or to technical schools, up from 46 percent five years ago, he said.
"We've really changed the college-going culture in our community, and our students really aspire to go on to college and universities," he said. He attributed the increase in part to the district's 21 career academies, which combine core academic classes with skills in training in various fields, including health, engineering, law and justice, and hospitality and tourism. One of the most successful has been one of the first, the information technology (IT) academy that started at El Cerrito High School, he said.
He also singled out several other successful programs in the district, including the Junior Achievement Company Program, where students learn about starting a business, and improved school safety efforts. The district also believes strongly in preserving other programs such as the science fairs and performing and visual arts, and he expressed appreciation to community partners like Chevron for their support.
Also praised by Harter was the WriterCoach Connection, which pairs volunteer writing coaches with students. It began last year at El Cerrito High, and Harter said he hopes to expand it around the district.
Attendance rate up
The district's attendance rate also has increased steadily over the past five years, Harter said. "This last year we finally cracked the 95 percent barrier."
A big reason, he said, can be found in the health centers in all high schools: "When students can get their health needs addressed, they're much more likely to be in school." The past five years have seen a decrease in teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, as well as a decline in the dropout rate.
Another successful health story is the district's focus on food offerings, Harter said.
"We've really eliminated all the junk food in our schools. You can't buy it, you can't eat anything but healthy foods in our schools today, and the students are eating it.
Funding problems remain serious
The budget remains a major challenge, Harter said.
"It seems like we've done nothing but cut, to the tune of a total of about $40 million out of our $240 million budgets, so it's a very big constraint on our programs and services," he said.
The school board trying to keep smaller class sizes, and has been successful in the K-2 levels until now but not at the middle and high schools where classes of 38 and 40 students prevail, he said.
"We have larger classes, we have fewer teachers, we have fewer support services, and our employees have had to take furloughs and benefit caps as well, which makes it much more difficult for us to go out and recruit and retain employees, particularly highly effective teachers that we need," Harter said.
Harter also relayed the "really disappointing" news of a drop in advanced placement (AP) classes, which are college courses that students take in high school in high schools. The graph displayed by Harter showed the number of AP exams declining this year from last year, after rising steadily since 2003. "It fell off simply because we can't have the course offerings we use to be able to have because of the constraints that we have from our budget," he said.
He expressed apprehension about further reductions in state funding, saying that the district has set aside funds to cover a possible further reduction in state support this school year but would face even larger cuts next school year.
"Honestly I'm beginning to run out of places where we're going to be able to cut," he said.
State loan burden expected to lifted soon
Harter reported that the district hopes to soon be rid of the large, 21-year-old state loan, which he compared to a "Sword of Damocles" and "the albatross around our neck."
"We're about to finally put the loan to rest," he said, noting that the district how has enough money in its long-term debt fund to pay off the balance in the loan. He said the district hopes that the current state audit of the loan issue will be completed by December with board action in January, "and then, hopefully, have a big loan pay-out party in February or March next year."
Michael O'Connor
8:55 am on Friday, October 28, 2011
Slightly off topic, but what ever happened to the story of many higher achieving El Cerrito resident students going to Albany schools. I understand that nothing has changed, other than the families involved are "strongly urged" to not talk about it. There has been no reporting about the situation for many months.
Ira Sharenow
10:00 am on Friday, October 28, 2011
At the end of the last school year the Albany School District asked those who used false addresses to self-report, but then there was never a story on what happened. Albany Patch ran several stories last year but then never reported on what was the conclusion.
In August the WCCUSD in response to an open records request advised me that 87 ECHS students had transferred out. I have data for all of the schools in the district.
Berkeley is the recipient of 281 WCCUSD students. The much smaller Albany district received 269 WCCUSD students. Interestingly for new transfers this year, Albany, by far, received the most at 69 with Berkeley Unified at 29 and Orinda Elementary at 27.
I previously submitted this to Patch, but the story was not covered.
With respect to the API, in 2009 ECHS scored 637 which put them in the bottom 20 percent statewide and the bottom 10% amongst peers. In 2002 ECHS scored 625, placing it in the bottom half statewide and in the bottom 40% amongst peer schools. Albany HS scored over 800 in all years.
In that period, statewide scores were up close to 100 points, but ECHS was only up 12 points, so ECHS did not keep up with the state.
I think EC residents need to decide if they want local control or if they want to remain part of a large and poorly performing district.
Ira Sharenow
11:18 am on Friday, October 28, 2011
Again big point gains do not necessarily mean much as many schools throughout the state have gained 100 points or more, especially the poorly performing schools such as most of the WCCUSD schools.
Portola went from 594 to 669, but its rankings dropped.
Fairmont went from 657 to 765 and its ranking stayed steady.
I believe that 800 is the minimum acceptable score.
Kensington continues to be one of the best in the state
http://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/AcntRpt2010/2009Base_Dst.aspx?cYear=&allcds=0761796&cChoice=2009BDst
Marty
11:48 am on Friday, October 28, 2011
Because Portola and ECHS follow a commuter rather than neighborhood school model, achievement follows a bimodal distribution along ethnic lines. They are each two schools under one roof; within-school variance is greater than among-school variance. That is the so-called achievement gap. A single API number is not as good a descriptor of those schools' populations as it would be at more homogenous schools.
Ira Sharenow
12:28 pm on Friday, October 28, 2011
Thanks for alerting me to take a closer look. There is indeed a bimodal distribution. However, even the groups that some might expect to score high did not do very well. I will need to take a closer look at this. But here is some data from the 2009 base ECHS API.
White 799
Asian 756
Hispanic 598
Black 504
According to CDE the biggest predictor is average parental education, and it may be that the various ethnic groups have significantly different scores for average parental education, so there may not be much (probably just less) of an ethnic achievement gap.
One can find more details by looking at the performance on the individual tests.
http://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/AcntRpt2010/2009BaseSch.aspx?cYear=2009-10&allcds=07-617960732941
http://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/
http://star.cde.ca.gov/star2011/SearchPanel.aspx?ps=true&lstTestYear=2010&lstTestType=C&lstCounty=07&lstDistrict=61796&lstSchool=&lstGroup=1&lstSubGroup=1
Todd Groves
2:59 pm on Friday, October 28, 2011
Ira, I've been studying the current high schoolers' numbers since they were in elementary. Only the hill schools were in high ranking in the early 00's. You are looking at the effect of curricular transitions in elementary that left our high schoolers with major academic deficits, and district ineptitude at creating a climate of positive growth. Now most ECHS feeder elementaries are at or above 800. If we did nothing but wait 4 years, ECHS numbers will skyrocket without a single policy change.
We should be pissed at these results, but we should also examine the causes carefully. I fault exclusive focus on the achievement gap, Take a look at this right-looking analyst's intriguing theory, http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/our-achievement-gap-mania. Our curricula choices are the instructional equivalent of an hammer, and making student needs appear as nails.
What would be different with "local control"? If it's setting expectations that meet standards of this scholarly community, count me in. If it's excluding kids that live across San Pablo, no way!
Demand more local control over what and how we teach, coupled with accountability for underperformance. Demand our unions and district work together to identify and remove persistently ineffective teachers and staff in return for more tax money. Nothing will more improve functioning. WCCUSD is in this condition because we let it be. Fix the district we have.
Local Mom
11:57 am on Friday, October 28, 2011
Thank you commenters for all the info.
Marty
1:41 pm on Friday, October 28, 2011
I'm not a social scientist or statistician but In this district, student achievement, parental education, socio-economic status, home address (census tract), and ethnicity seem well correlated. Those associations should not of course pre-determine or shape any student's outcome, but they do call into question the "learning by osmosis" hypothesis that seems to underpin busing kids from west Richmond to EC. On the radio today, as black man was talking about Measure H in SF (neighborhood schools) and saying his children had benefited from the sense of community gained by attending a schools nearby. I think it is mainly white "progressives" who think diversity is a magic bullet--so long as it's some other family's kid that has to travel. I would bet most African American and Latino families would rather be assigned an equally-resourced school closer to home, with the option to transfer to meet their individual needs.
Todd Groves
2:21 pm on Friday, October 28, 2011
Marty, many kids attending ECHS live as Kennedy High School neighbors. If your hypothesis bore out, South Richmond families would be transferring to Kennedy in droves, but this hasn't happened. For the most part, families find ECHS attractive and seek to transfer in from other district high schools, so we must be doing something well.
Ira Sharenow
2:40 pm on Friday, October 28, 2011
Students may be transferring into ECHS from other communities, but then many who live in EC transfer out to private schools, Albany HS, or other public schools. My guess is that the impact on EC property values could be 20% or more. On the API, El Cerrito HS does score near the bottom when compared to schools statewide and to its peers. In 2010 ECHS scored 201 points lower than Albany HS.
http://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/Acnt2011/2010BaseSch.aspx?allcds=01611270130450
Todd Groves
3:14 pm on Friday, October 28, 2011
Don't confuse this with WCCUSD apologia. We can and need to do much better. Matt Burnham at the Portola faculty have dramatically raised expectations this year, practically turning on a dime. This was done not by district fiat, but with genuine local professionalism coupled with generous community support.
We need the district to think about trading instructional days for planning days. If we began the year with effective planning for 2 days prior to school starting, we can achieve more forward momentum. We have extraordinary, gifted teachers that can establish the right academic climate if given the resources and license. Again, accountability must be woven into the mix.
Ira Sharenow
9:15 pm on Friday, October 28, 2011
It seems like the 29,000 student WCCUSD is focused on getting students up to a minimal level, but what happens to those El Cerrito students who are really smart but cannot afford to go to a private school and were unable to get into Albany HS or an Acalanes school?
It seems to me that El Cerrito needs to have its own school district.
And the elementary schools do not appear to be doing very well. It can be tough to know what an index score such as the API really means, so I took a look at Fairmont’s performance on STAR. Fifth grade English, was only 33% advanced and 29% proficient. Third grade was 6% advanced and 11% proficient. In contrast Marin had 70% advanced fifth graders and 43% advanced third graders. Many Fairmont students are below basic or far below basic.
http://star.cde.ca.gov/star2010/ViewReport.asp?ps=true&lstTestYear=2010&lstTestType=C&lstCounty=07&lstDistrict=61796-000&lstSchool=6004758&lstGroup=1&lstSubGroup=1
Harter also relayed the "really disappointing" news of a drop in advanced placement (AP) classes, which are college courses that students take in high school in high schools. The graph displayed by Harter showed the number of AP exams declining this year from last year, after rising steadily since 2003. "It fell off simply because we can't have the course offerings we use to be able to have because of the constraints that we have from our budget," he said.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_19203285
Todd Groves
11:37 pm on Friday, October 28, 2011
You are right in assessing district goals, incentivized by No Child Left Behind, as focused on getting kids to proficiency. WCCUSD must aim to move proficient students to advanced status, as San Ramon Unified currently aims to do. We need to do better by high performing students, employing strategies and resources that allow them to grow academically. A new district isn't the answer, rather organizing enough concerned parents to demand change of practice. All our kids need academic engagement appropriate for them, including kids at the high end.
Ruby MacDonald
9:07 am on Sunday, October 30, 2011
Apropos to comments by Michael, Ira and Marty, the "710" or any test score, which is used to describe how WCCUSD or any district as a whole is doing, is unreliable unless one specifies how many and which students that figure represents. Since the CA Dept. of Education website shows that the 2010 WCCUSD scores represented about 10,000 elementary school students and only about 4,200 middle school students and 5,800 high school students, the "710" score reflected the disproportionately larger influence of the much better performance of the elementary school students than the disportionately smaller influence of the poorer performance of the high school students. The middle school students seem to be about in the middle of the two. These figures also jibe with parents de-selecting WCCUSD middle schools and high schools when their kids moved on from elementary school. Another troublesome feature of these numbers is their total of 20,000 students for a district which supposedly serves 29,000 students. It would be helpful if Dr. Harter would address these issues and what specifically is being done to address them.
Ira Sharenow
10:42 am on Sunday, October 30, 2011
Yes, good point. That is why I looked at the high school API score and then looked at the underlying test scores. ECHS is not doing very well.
Todd Groves
1:39 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
As reported by Patch earlier this year, WCCUSD data available through CDE contains inaccuracies, some quite significant. CDE has ECHS's 2010-11 enrollment at 957 when the school held more than 1300. Our schools are awash in data sets that are difficult to verify. Policy making and instructional choices based on faulty data will give us "garbage-in, garbage-out," results.
Our kids take standardized tests and assessments almost as much as they spend time learning, but none measure the only meaningful variable, student motivation. Cracking the motivation key is everything. Closing the achievement gap by focusing on content mastery is de-motivating for kids both ahead of and behind the curve.We use curricula designed for a "meaty middle" when we have a bi-modal distribution. Kids behind grade level often need the motivation to gain measured skills, as they perceive school work as boring and pointless. Most kids ahead of the curve need opportunities to learn in depth while gaining the skills to be academically competitive. All kids need to feel a welcomed, integral and responsible member of the school community. Once we achieve schools that make better kids, our CDE data points will reflect it.
Ira Sharenow
2:03 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
You can check out some UC data
http://statfinder.ucop.edu/
http://statfinder.ucop.edu/reports/schoolreports/comparison_school_report.aspx?atpCode=50815&atpCode1=50035&Year=2008-09&Type=highschool
http://www.ucop.edu/news/studstaff.html
There have to be reasons why so many El Cerrito families are so desperate to get their kids out of WCCUSD schools.
Todd Groves
2:27 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
Given the huge disparities in average parental education levels between ECHS and Albany, I'm surprised the gaps in UC enrollment and persistence are so narrow for all the supposed advantage Albany offers. Slight advantages in SAT scores and writing go to Albany, but nothing dramatic. WCCUSD needs to bolster expectations and rigor, yet every year we send kids to all UC's, Ivy League and other prestige schools. We can and should do better, but there is no need to panic.
Ruby MacDonald
9:10 am on Sunday, October 30, 2011
P.S. Anyone can google CA Department of Education, Testing & Accountability, AYP Report, West Contra Costa, 2010 Growth..., Base, Schools and do the arithmetic, as I did.
Ellen
12:53 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
I believe overall student achievement and success (measured in part by test scores, but also by attendance, retention, and graduation rates...) would increase at ECHS if ALL teachers did as my daughter's current Advanced Algebra/Trig teacher is doing. He told the students (and then the parents at Back To School Night) that "not passing" was not an option. Rather than dummy down the curriculum, he holds every student accountable. Any student who cannot complete the "exit ticket" (a problem that exemplifies what the students have learned that period) must come in at lunch or during the last period of the day or after school for additional help. The math department has older students on hand to help younger ones, teachers, student-teachers, and so on there every day to help move students forward. Any student who does not pass a test must re-take it. Plain and simple, the students get the message pretty quickly that the expectations are high, but that there is ample support to help students meet those expectations. Students WILL rise to the challenge. The bar must be set higher at ECHS, and the expectations should be that all students can and will do the work. Period. No student benefits from lowered standards or expectations.
Todd Groves
2:03 pm on Sunday, October 30, 2011
Heroic teachers like Mr. Lindsay bear the burden of exceptionally low systemic expectations and pressures to move kids move students along. I visited a high performing middle school in a high performing district last Spring. Students there that come to class without homework must spend lunch and afterschool in study halls until assignments are complete. This policy has widespread support from faculty, administration and district levels. Ask why we can't do the same here, and you will hear a litany of reasons from the bus schedule, to not wanting to discourage kids .The primary purpose behind WCCUSD summer school is to get gets "excited" about learning in fall, not to learn the material they failed in the previous year. We throw kids into Algebra in 8th grade who can't handle fractions.
WCCUSD has bungled academic initiatives at nearly every turn in the last 15 years, mostly from following "best practices." We have an exceptional lot of gifted teachers at ECHS. Give them what they need, let them shape earlier grade academic goals and El Cerrito schools will transform. Hamhanded district, State and Federal initiatives have caused more havoc than help. High expectations and no excuses will work wonders.
Marty
11:40 am on Monday, October 31, 2011
Mary, I agree. We were (and are) very impressed by our son's ECHS math teacher, Ms. Garcia. At Back to School Night she'd been on the job less than a week, but seemed very professional and enthusiatic about being there. Each math teacher covers one lunch period a week to help all math students. Mr. Wolf-Root said this year there was a math placement process for incoming Portola 7th graders. Finally! Last year there were only three 7th graders taking Algebra 1, and then only because of Mr. Burnham's mid-year intervention. Statewide, 5% do; in some schools (including our own Hercules MS) its 15%. HQ can't seem to figure out that
some kids are ready for Algebra in 7th, some not until HS. So many assessments--but how are the data used? The band and sports have tryouts; why is it shunned here as un-PC "tracking" for academic subjects? They sure don't see it that way in Piedmont, Orinda, China or India.
sharon layton
9:12 am on Friday, November 4, 2011
As a graduate of Albany High in 1950 and a parent of El cerrito Grads ca. 1970-80 I say a-men!