A Long, Hard Climb Begins

California’s youngest students are doing better in reading and math, according to the state’s first Academic Performance Index progress report. They are making dramatic gains in the primary grades, where the state’s emphasis on stronger teaching, systematic reading instruction and smaller classes began. Not so in the higher grades, where fewer students are improving, posing a greater challenge for parents, teachers, local school boards, Sacramento and even Washington.

Fixing the public schools is priority No. 1, prompting all manner of reforms. California’s progress report, based solely for now on Stanford 9 standardized test scores, provides solid evidence that the statewide focus on early literacy, higher standards, class-size reduction, more remedial instruction and intensive training for all teachers, including those who hold emergency credentials, is beginning to pay off in the lower grades. The gains, most pronounced in second and third grade, indicate that more students can read fluently, spell properly, understand grammar, punctuate correctly and solve math problems.

Three out of four elementary schools in California met or exceeded the goals set by the state, raising the question of whether the targets are too low. The current growth target--a gain of 5% of the gap between the previous year’s results and the overall state goal--is appropriate in the initial years of statewide reform. That bar should be raised incrementally as the state phases in English, math and other subject tests that measure how students perform against the new standards and as more students master the fundamentals.

To meet its target and collect lucrative state incentive awards, a school is also required to post solid results across its entire enrollment, among students of every family income level, race and ethnicity. Because of that requirement, California is beginning to close the achievement gap as test scores of black, Latino and poor students improve at a higher rate than those of white, Asian and affluent students.

Public education cannot improve substantially in California until large and poor school systems make forward strides. The Los Angeles Unified School District did just that at the elementary level, where three out of four schools met their targets and nearly 200 campuses at least doubled their goals. The progress is much better than expected--even though test scores remain scandalously low on some campuses.

Now that California schools have demonstrated that educators know what works in the primary grades, they must pay greater attention to middle schools--little more than half measured up--and to high schools, only 38% of which met their targets.

For starters, Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature should fund intensive back-to-basics reading instruction for students scarred because California extensively used the “whole language” method of teaching reading before children learned to sound out words. The state is already paying for research-based reading instruction in the early grades and should also do so for the higher grades in order to reverse pervasive reading failure.

Turning around public education will require staying the course for years to come. Considering that California was long the national model for public schools, these first Academic Performance Index growth results are nothing to crow about. But considering how far the schools have fallen, this must be seen as a first step in a long, hard climb.