Schools use rankings for improvement

By MICHELLE ALAIMO

In the age of holding schools accountable for the quality of their curriculum, several local high school districts are stepping up to the plate to study how they can improve.

Since 1997, California schools have been ranked based on student's scores on the Stanford 9 (SAT-9) exam. Until now, the results have been nothing more than rankings comparing scores of one school against others. But beginning this year, those rankings will be tied to financial rewards or penalties, depending on a school's scores.

Fremont Union High School District students traditionally have scored well on the SAT-9 tests. That fact not withstanding, district administrators decided to use the scores as a tool to determine where and how they could improve teaching skills. "It's a real power having this kind of information," FUHSD superintendent Joe Hamilton said.

In 1997, the FUHSD, along with the Campbell Union and Moreland High School Districts, teamed up with the Santa Clara County Office of Education and Community Training and Assistance Center to form the California Accountability Project (CAP). The goal of the project is to improve the achievement of every student with the help of sophisticated data analysis.

"This isn't anything new," Hamilton said. "We're just moving in a direction where we are using data to make new programs."

Hamilton said the CAP project has helped staff at Lynbrook High School determine they weren't grading too leniently. He said the staff had been concerned about grade inflation because so many students were receiving B's or higher in all their classes.

The district compared the SAT-9 test results to those of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and found that the results were similar, Hamilton said.

The superintendent also said the district is looking at how to improve its curriculum based on the SAT-9 test results. When a school is given its test results, it also is given an Academic Performance Index number that tells by what percentage it needs to improve the scores on the next year's test. In the FUHSD, the growth target has been anywhere from simply sustaining scores to a growth target of 6 percent.

"We don't want to rearrange our curriculum around the tests," Hamilton said. However, he said, teachers have changed their curriculum to emphasize areas they thought were being taught well but that showed up as weak areas on the SAT-9.

"Educationally, the real important information for us is to be able to discover areas that we need to be doing a better job in," Hamilton said.

Other districts involved in CAP found similar results to FUHSD. The CUSD used the data analysis to help identify which students needed extra help in math and reading. And the MHSD discovered a significant gap between minority and non-minority students.

Officials with the SCCOE expect the CAP project to expand to other school districts in the state.

Meanwhile, the three founding school districts of CAP plan to continue the program, even after the consultant leaves at the end of the current school year.

"It's going to be seamless and just become a way of doing things," Hamilton said.

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