Los Angeles public school students have some positive news when it comes to the standardized tests they took in spring: Their scores rose in math and English across nearly every grade level and demographic — a year-over-year increase that bested improvements seen in state scores.
But in the broader picture — beyond a one-year snapshot — the percentage of students meeting the state math and English standards remains below the state. Highlights include:
- 43% of LAUSD students met grade-level standards in English, up 1.8 percentage points. Statewide, 47% of students are proficient in English.
- In math, 32.8% of Los Angeles students met standards, up 2.3 percentage points from 2023 scores. Statewide, 35.5% of student are proficient.
- LAUSD proficiency rates in science reached 24%, up 1.8 percentage from 2023. Statewide it’s 30.7%.
Put another way, 57% of Los Angeles Unified students do not meet standards in English; 67.2% do not meet standards in math and 76% in science.
Yet, Los Angeles school leaders Friday found reason to celebrate the improving scores.
“We’re not done,” school board President Jackie Goldberg said at a news conference. “We’re not at the state average in anything yet. … But when you see growth that looks like this, you actually now believe that it’s possible to get there.”
Supt. Alberto Carvalho said students’ growth, not their overall proficiency rates, is most important. The proficiency rate measures what percentage of students have met the California learning standard expected for a certain grade or subject matter.
“America has a proficiency issue, particularly applicable to students of color, English language learners and students with disabilities,” Carvalho said. “The strategy for that is to improve the rate of growth separating those students from all other students in America, and what we’re doing here, what we’re proving is it’s working.”
The Department of Education has administered the Smarter Balanced assessments, which measure whether students are meeting state standards, since 2015. Students are tested in math and English in grades three through eight and 11. They are tested in science in grades five and eight as well as once in high school.
Gains among English learners, others
The district saw particular gains among English learners and students with disabilities, both groups achieving the proficiency rates last seen before the pandemic. Still, scores remain low: 10.7% of English learners met standards in English and 8.9% in math. For students with disabilities, 13.5% of students met English standards and 11% in math.
That means that across both groups, more than 85% of students are not proficient in math and English.
LAUSD’s 121 priority schools — schools the district has determined to be in need of additional investment — saw gains, according to the district. But LAUSD did not release proficiency rates for those schools.
Black student performance in math was a particularly bright spot for growth. Metrics not only surpassed those of the district’s Black students in pre-pandemic 2019, but also hit the state’s 2019 metrics with 20.7% of students meeting grade-level standards. Still, nearly 4 in 5 Black students are not proficient in math.
But spring 2024 scores remain low for 11th grade students, who will be graduating this year: 49.6% of students are proficient in English and 21.4% in math, rates at least 6 percentage points below this year’s 11th-grade state scores. Scores remain 2.1% lower than before the pandemic in English and 3.9% in math. At the same time, LAUSD’s graduation rate has jumped to nearly 84% in 2023, about 5 percentage points above the 2019 rate.
LAUSD’s youngest students — in grades 3 through 5 — saw increases that exceeded pre-pandemic levels in math. However, older students are still struggling to recover.
Stanford professor Thomas S. Dee said this in part could result from compositional changes. Younger families were more likely to move or pull their students out of public schools during the pandemic to avoid online instruction. High school students were more likely to stay and also faced chronic absenteeism and mental health struggles.
USC professor Morgan Polikoff said that there is still far to go to reach strong academic levels, an issue that districts across the state have grappled with since before the pandemic.
“California is not a particularly high-performing state. There are still serious concerns about student performance, not to mention other outcomes like chronic absenteeism and graduation,” he said, when looking at LAUSD’s performance in comparison to California.
Dee said the gains among LAUSD’s demographics are hopeful but that there were important caveats to consider within the data’s composition.
With declining enrollment, the district’s demographics have changed, which would affect the data.
“I do see that as encouraging, but also would hold those results until we can more carefully assess whether it reflects true academic recovery,” Dee said. “We don’t quite understand who is now in the district and who is sitting for these tests several years after the pandemic started.”
Polikoff agreed, noting that many other states compare an average of individual student progress to determine improvements, whereas California compares only the percentage of students who have met the state’s learning standards.
LAUSD’s rising test scores come three years after the pandemic pushed schools to close and classes to shift online for nearly a year — and as state and federal pandemic funds expire, which will limit district funding for extra intervention programs.
L.A. Unified and other districts across the state continue to grapple with enrollment declines and chronic absenteeism as educators focus on getting students back on track academically.
Carvalho said the district is refining its budgetary approaches to maintain investments in its schools despite the reduction in funding, choosing to reduce administrative funding, while also calling for further investment.
“We are concerned and we ought to rally before members of Congress and Sacramento for increased levels of funding, not decreased,” he said.“
Rachel Ruffalo, EdTrust West’s senior director of strategic advocacy, applauded LAUSD’s growth this year, emphasizing a need for continued investment in its students. She also said it was important to understand that test scores are not the only metric that districts should be looking at when evaluating student success.
“Other data points that get to students’ experiences and the different types of access and resources that students have really all need to be taken into consideration as we think about what’s working and where we should invest,” she said.
