Greater Orange News Service

SPECIAL REPORT

STATE TESTING SCORES IN FOR ORANGE UNIFIED:
What kind of American does OUSD produce?



“As our STAR results released today show, California schools have a long way to go to help all our students meet their full potential.” - from State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell 8/15/07 Press Release

The California standardized S.T.A.R. testing results for the 2006-2007 school year have been released showing some state-wide gains with continuing disappointment in racial and social achievement testing gaps . While some bright spots and more frequent disappointments are found in the scores, despite millions and millions of educational tax dollars pumped by OUSD Bureaucrats into the failed consultant driven OUSD Focus on Results program, OUSD test results for the most part remained disappointing. True to Orange Unified Superintendent Dr. Thomas Godley’s assertion that while OUSD scores are going up, they are not going up fast enough to keep pace with stringent federal No Child Left Behind benchmarks, OUSD again saw a mixed bag of scores that overall continue to present a bleak picture in key testing areas with what appears no successful plan to address the failures in place.

OUSD: A FAILED FOCUS?
While OUSD is unique in Orange County for the huge commitment of educational resources to the much maligned OUSD Focus on Results program (the program at one time was compared by a top OUSD Administrator as akin to “marriage encounter training”), the program has no proven impact on OUSD’s testing results. The 2006-2007 S.T.A.R. testing results again appear to show OUSD Focus on Results program, infamous for its waste of money, staff time, and focus on unproven approaches (i.e. teams of administrators and teachers leaving their workplace to visit classrooms for 5 minutes to do bulletin board checks to see posted student work), again did not produce scores that in anyway outshine districts that have not invested millions of educational tax dollars in wasteful hocus-pocus bureaucratic programs.

In addition, community watchdogs point out that OUSD’s Focus on Results does not Focus on OUSD. In particular OUSD is a perfect example of California’s struggle with the “achievement gap”. OUSD’s Focus on Results has ignored and failed to address the locally well known “55 divide” effect (schools east of the 55 Orange Freeway in OUSD continue to outperform schools west of the 55 Freeway) that has racial, social and economic overtones associated with the state-wide testing scores “achievement gap”.

When will OUSD Administrators
FOCUS on AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP ?
Furthermore, the “focus” of OUSD’s Focus on Results has produced an artificially imposed district-wide ill defined focus that has taken away from many of the real educational tasks at hand. Case in point is the dismal eleventh grade United States History Scores that shows OUSD is failing at the American enculturation of a generation of local students. In OUSD, only 38% of the soon-to-be legal adults have acquired enough knowledge of the United States to score Proficient or Above in the eleventh grade standards (meaning 62% scored non-Proficient in the state standards; 30% of those non-Proficient students are Below and Far/Below in the U.S. History standards testing). Those standards include an understanding of the following: the philosophy of the founding of the U.S. Government (Standard 11.1); industrialization and immigration (11.2); the role of religion in moral, social and political context (11.3); the rise of the U.S. as the only Superpower (11.4); understanding of the Great Depression and the New Deal (11.6); the U.S. role in World War II (11.7); civil rights and voting (11.10); modern social problems including drug abuse, immigration, out-of-wedlock births (11.12).

El Modena H.S. was the only OUSD high school with a bare majority of 11th graders (56%) scoring Proficient or Above in the U.S. History Testing, but still, over a quarter of the students scored Below/Far below Basic in their testing (26%). Also of note in the U.S. History Testing: Richland Continuation H.S.-93% failed to score Proficient or Above in state U.S. History standards testing; Orange H.S.- 77% failed to score Proficient or Above in state U.S. History standards testing.

The following chart outlines the OUSD U.S. History scores:

OUSD SCORES: US HISTORY Grade 11
OUSD district percentage Proficient and ADVANCED scores:
38% of students

OUSD district percentage of NON- Proficient scores:
62% of students

OUSD district percentage BELOW BASIC and FAR BELOW BASIC:
30% of students

U.S. History Scores by High Schools:

Richland H.S.
Proficient or Advanced 7%
non-Proficient 93%
Below/Far Below Basic 73%

Orange H.S.
Proficient or Advanced 23%
non-Proficient 77%
Below/Far Below Basic 40%

Villa Park H.S.
Proficient or Advanced 46%
non-Proficient 54%
Below/Far Below Basic 21%

Canyon H.S.
Proficient or Advanced 47%
non-Proficient 53%
Below/Far Below Basic 23%

El Modena
Proficient or Advanced 56%
non-Proficient 44%
Below/Far Below Basic 26%

Mixed Results with OUSD “Focus” on Basics
While districts with testing problems like to compare themselves to the much lower state-wide testing results that are impacted by scores from giant urban district’s like Oakland Unified and Los Angeles Unified, when comparing OUSD STAR scores to overall Orange County scores a true picture emerges of the continuing OUSD testing problems compared to the county gains.

In OUSD math score comparisons of grades 2-7 with Orange County scores had OUSD equaling the Orange County Proficient or Above scores in only the 2nd grade level (64% scored Proficient or Above). All other OUSD grade levels were lower than the Orange County percentages. OUSD 4th graders tied the state-wide 56% Proficient or Above (seven points below the Orange County 63% mark) and only 48% of OUSD 5th graders scored Proficient or Above, below the state by 1 % point (State 49%) and Orange County by 3% (OC 51%).

OUSD MATH SCORES: grades 2-7
OUSD Grade Levels with scores BELOW or EVEN with Orange County % averages
(Percentage of students at the PROFIECENT or ADVANCED levels)

2nd
OUSD % 64%
OC % 64%
Difference SAME


3rd
OUSD %60%
OC % 63%
Difference -3%


4th
OUSD % 56%
OC % 63%
Difference -7% (OUSD TIED state average at 56%)


5th
OUSD % 48%
OC % 51%
Difference -3 (OUSD BELOW state average 49%)


6th
OUSD %49%
OC %51%
Difference -2%

7th
OUSD %45%
OC %47%
Difference -2%


The brightest spot in the OUSD scores were in the English standards in grades 2-11. Only four grades were the same or below Orange County Proficient or Above scores, while six grades beat the Orange County average by of two percentage points. OUSD Ninth graders scored the highest with 60% scoring Proficient or Above. That left leaving 40% of the OUSD ninth graders non-proficient in the ninth grade state English standards.

OUSD ENGLISH SCORES: grades 2-11
OUSD Grade Levels with scores BELOW or EVEN with Orange County percent averages
(Percentage of students at the PROFIECENT or ADVANCED levels)
GRADE
2nd
OUSD 54%
OC 55%
Difference -1%


4th
OUSD 58%
OC 58%
Difference Same


6th
OUSD 51%
OC 52%
Difference -1%

11th
OUSD 48%
OC 48%
Difference Same



OUSD Grade Levels with scores ABOVE Orange County percent averages
(Percentage of students at the PROFIECENT or ADVANCED levels)GRADE
3rd
OUSD 44%
OC 43%
Difference +2%


5th
OUSD 52%
OC 51%
Difference +1

7TH
OUSD 56%
OC 55%
Difference =2%

8Th
OUSD 52%
OC 50%
Difference +2%

9th
OUSD 60%
OC 58%
Difference +2%

10th
OUSD 51%
OC 48%
Difference +3%


FOR COMPLETE 2006-2007 OUSD STAR TEST INFORMATION CLICK ON:
OUSD STAR RESULTS

This SPECIAL REPORT
is a news production of ORANGE NET NEWS /O/N/N/