Ventura County Schools Improve on State Tests

In an era of high-stakes accountability based on statewide test scores, county school districts showed marked improvement on the Stanford 9 achievement exam, advances attributed to more teacher collaboration, stronger reading instruction and an emphasis on test preparation.

While scores rose across the board in all 20 districts, Oxnard Elementary, Fillmore Unified and Ojai Unified showed the most progress among the county’s largest districts, according to a statistical analysis by The Times.

All three districts posted gains at every grade level, with third-graders leading the way. Those students jumped 8 to 16 percentile points in reading, math and language. And with the exception of Ojai’s language score, fifth-graders in all three districts improved 4 to 10 percentile points in those subjects.

“We have come really far in the last few years,” Oxnard Assistant Supt. Connie Sharp said. “But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have a ways to go. We want to look at every single student who is below grade level and get the scores up.”

Despite posting big gains, the west county districts still scored far below those in the east county. Scores in Conejo Valley and Oak Park generally rose only a few percentile points, but students in those districts were already scoring between the 60th and 70th percentile in most grades and subjects.

Moreover, some educators argue that scores in Oxnard and Fillmore were so low last year that they could only improve. For example, Oxnard’s seventh-graders scored at the 28th percentile in reading last year. That means they performed better than only 28% of students in a national sample. This year, they scored at the 34th percentile.