Schools score high in academic index

Ashlyn Lindsay, 6, left, and Hannah Bartels, 7, attend Santa Rosetta Stone software Clara School, which scored 939 out of 1,000 in the state Academic Performance Index this year. Nearly two-thirds of Ventura County public schools met the state's expectations for academic improvement, while less than half of schools statewide met their goals, according to student test score results released Friday by the California Department of Education."Our biggest gains are in the districts with a higher concentration of English-language learners, like the Oxnard and Santa Paula elementary school districts and the Santa Paula Union High School District," said county Superintendent of Schools Charles Weis. "I'm really impressed with their progress."About 62 percent of Ventura County schools hit their state academic targets this year, compared with 45 percent statewide.The state Academic Performance Index uses student test results to measure academic growth and rank schools on a scale of 200 to 1,000, with 800 as the statewide goal.This year's API also had new accountability targets for different subgroups of students based on things such as ethnicity, income and disabilities. For a school to meet its overall target this year, subgroups at the school had to show gains as well.With the new accountability targets, Rosetta Stone Italian the outlook statewide "did not look rosy," state schools Superintendent Jack O'Connell said during a teleconference Friday."Now for the first time we are holding schools accountable for closing the achievement gap," O'Connell said. "We have raised the bar, and we are treating each subgroup as their own school. As a state, we have a moral, ethical and economic obligation to address the needs of every group of students."In the Conejo Valley Unified School District, for example, all three high schools — Newbury Park, Thousand Oaks and Westlake — scored above 800 but did not achieve their overall API targets, because some of their subgroups did not make their targets.Newbury Park High Principal Athol Wong said a majority of its students still learning to speak, read and write English, or "English-language learners" in academic parlance, didn't have enough language instruction at the time they took the test. The test also doesn't measure the gains each student has made over the year, Wong said."In many ways, it represents a moving target for us," Wong said. "The weighing of subpopulation and English-learning students has increased. It is important to have an evaluation system that does highlight the real issues, and certainly that's one of them."The Oxnard Union High School District increased its overall score by four points, to 673. But the scores for some schools and their subgroups "were not high enough," said Rebecca Buettner, district director of assessment and accountability. About 30 percent of the district's student population are English-language learners, Buettner said.Other highlights of the 2007 API results include:n About 74 percent of schools in Rosetta Stone Japanese Ventura County had API scores of 700 or above, with 17 schools scoring above 900.n Chavez School in Oxnard advanced by 69 points, the highest gain in the county.n Santa Paula High and Ventura High had the largest API growth — 34 points — among conventional high schools in the county, scoring 671 and 722, respectively.n Although Mound School's score dropped by 18 points this year, the Ventura elementary school's score of 942 was still the highest in the county. Santa Clara School between Santa Paula and Fillmore was a close second, with 939.n For districts as a whole, Oak Park Unified led the way with 866 points, followed by Conejo Valley Unified with 853 and Pleasant Valley in Camarillo with 844.Foothill Technology in Ventura scored the highest among [Rosetta Stone ] high schools, with 916 points, and Principal Joe Bova had to make a wardrobe change Friday morning. Bova promised to students that he would wear a dress to school if at least 90 percent of them scored at a proficient level or better on the U.S. history part of the tests."I can't tell you how proud I am of the students, teachers and the staff," Bova said.