CALIFORNIA SCHOOL DASHBOARD was discussed during the School Board meeting of Sierra Plumas Joint Unified School District (SPJUSD) and Sierra County Office of Education on December 17th in Downieville. District Superintendent Sean Snider explained the Dashboard shows how schools are doing. It’s part of the State Accountability System, tracks performance, helps identify gaps in performance across student groups, and uses color-coded indicators to guide districts in focusing on areas needing growth. He stated, “Our data is not good.” Under District Performance Review, SPJUSD shows Chronic absenteeism in red, suspension rate in orange, English Language Arts (ELA) in orange and Mathematics in orange. Green and blue are colors that districts strive to reach.Under Academic Performance ELA is 50.2 points below standard, declining 21.6 points from the prior year. Mathematics is 56.4 points below standard and declined 13.4 points. 33.3% are making progress for English learners and 43.3% are prepared for college/career prepared which declined 15.3%. It was stated the numbers have been inaccurate since 2017. They have been working to get the numbers corrected and now feel they are at a more accurate baseline to grow. Snider stated the Dashboard penalizes districts for participation rates. If you don’t have 95% of kids take the tests, you will be penalized. For example, last year 7 students received a 0 score on ELA because that was what the district lacked for 95%. The district hurt in math as well due to the participation rate. Snider said they still had low scores but even lower due to kids not participating. The District is getting Differentiated Assistance which is targeted technical assistance, designed to assist Local Educational Agencies (LEAs) to address underlying causes that led to low student outcomes while strengthening the LEA’s overall ability to evaluate the effectiveness of strategies and programs, adjusting as appropriate. Since the district is a single-district county, assistance comes from Placer County Office of Ed.Snider laid out steps they are taking to improve. They will continue to work with Placer County, support efforts with chronic absenteeism, use Attendance Works data resources, literacy work, science of reading, screening for reading difficulties, new math pilot and adoption next year. He concluded by stating they can’t do it all at once but already have a lot of work underway and is optimistic next year’s results will be better.
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