School’s Gains on Index: Close but No Cigar

For teachers at Las Positas Elementary in La Habra, Monday’s release of the state’s academic performance data held a classic lesson in good news and bad news.

The good news is that the school serving a diverse community in north Orange County has for the second consecutive year surpassed its growth target set by the state, with most of its students doing far better than what was required of them.

The bad news is that for the second consecutive year, the school will receive none of the money the state doles out to schools that meet a complex set of criteria.

The gap between Las Positas and thousands of dollars in awards is exactly three points among one small group of students.

“It is so demoralizing for the teacher,” said Las Positas principal Sandi Baltes. “You come here any day of the week at seven or eight at night, and you’ll find all kinds of teachers still working. . . . There are things I’d like to do [with award money] for my staff and kids, and it just seems unfair.”

What Baltes considers unfair is the way the state calculates who receives money and who doesn’t. Teachers may knock themselves out raising their students’ skills, students may score in the stratosphere and still awards may be withheld.

To qualify, the school must improve its overall test score and also those of subgroups. Such groups include students from low-income households and ethnic groups of significant size on campus.

State education officials say the system ensures that no one is left behind in the push for excellence.

“We don’t want a situation where you have one group of kids performing extraordinarily well and the other entities are not,” said Doug Stone, a spokesman for the state Department of Education.

The goal is to bring most schools to a score of 800 points out of a possible 1,000 in the API. Schools scoring below the 800 mark must gain a certain fraction of the difference each year.

Teachers at Las Positas agree that all students must be accounted for, but they say the formula now hurts even those schools where all students are showing significant growth.

“It is hurting all the kids,” said Barbara Barr, a program coordinator at Las Positas. The students “didn’t get any recognition for what they did.”

The school improved its score from 624 to 635 this year, two points higher than its target of nine. But the subgroups were also required to bring up their scores by seven points, as mandated by the state formula.

Low-income students at the school raised their score by 18 points, and Latino students, many of whom are still learning English, improved their scores by 19.

However, white students who were already scoring high at 780 points raised their score by four points, three short of the requirement. That means the whole school is now ineligible for an award.

“It’s frustrating,” said Adele Foster, who teaches the gifted children’s program at the 700-student campus. “High achievers are being penalized because of a formula.”

Last year, the school was left out of the awards pot despite beating its growth target of 12 points with a whopping 62-point increase in the index. That year again, the white students improved, but not by enough for an award.

Adele and other teachers argue that a fairer method would be to require the subgroups to improve based on their particular scores, not that of the school as a whole. If the 105 white students at Las Positas constituted the entire enrollment, they would have been required to improve their score by only a single point this year to earn an award.

At least 54 schools in Orange County find themselves in similar predicaments. Westminster High School, which recently celebrated a $2.7-million bonus for its staff based on last year’s API score, will be left out this time despite across-the-board improvements.

“Any time you set up awards, you’re going to have losers and winners,” said Jerry White, curriculum development director for Huntington Beach Union High School District, which oversees Westminster High.

Nonetheless, White and other local educators say, the current state system sometimes creates a false perception that schools that do not qualify for awards are doing poorly.

Kathy Burnside, whose daughter Molly attends Las Positas, is saddened by that perception.

“I know the teachers are working really hard, and I couldn’t ask for a better curriculum,” Burnside, 45, said Monday.

*

Times staff writer Jessica Garrison contributed to this story.