Healdsburg schools’ test scores continue upward trend

Healdsburg Unified School District received increased test
scores for the fifth consecutive year on the Annual Performance
Index report released last week, while schools and districts across
the county continued to report subpar results.
This year’s overall score of 772 for the Healdsburg Unified
School District moves closer to the state goal of 800, while
individual school scores are closer yet with elementary leading the
way at 788.
The API was established in California as a way to measure
schools growth on a scale ranging from a low of 200 to a high of
1,000. California has set a goal for all schools to reach 800 by
the 2013/2014 school year.
“We are right on the cusp for all of our schools,”
Superintendent Jeff Harding said of getting closer to the state
goal.
Healdsburg Elementary School and Fitch Mountain Campus have
experienced the most significant improvement with an increase of 24
points following a 39-point increase the year before. Healdsburg
Junior High School scores decreased slightly this year to 765 after
gaining 38 points last year and Healdsburg High School moved up two
points to 778. A decrease in scores at the junior high is
attributed to declines in proficiency by English Language
Learners.
“It’s about incremental improvement, it’s about heading in the
right direction and there is still improvements yet to be made but
we have made improvements already despite reduction in our revenue
and cutting back programs and yet we continue to grow,” Harding
said.
The district released a detailed report of the past five years
of improvement showing that both the junior high and high school
have raised their scores around 50 points each since 2006 while the
elementary school raised their score 82 points.
“There has been tremendous improvement at the elementary level
and I think it has a lot to do with new curriculum, a lot of focus
on language arts and math and the focus on instruction and the
planning time for teachers that has been made available as a result
of HEF (Healdsburg Education Foundation) funding enrichment,”
Harding said.
School-wide gains at the elementary school were in English and
Language Arts with noteworthy improvements for Socioeconomically
Disadvantaged, Hispanic, White, and English Learner subgroups.
Proficiency for Hispanic students increased from 33.7 percent last
year to 43.5 percent this year.
“Our desire is to help our English Learners learn English as
quickly as possible,” said Harding. “It begins in kinder and
continues on as our objective although we have a ways to go but we
are seeing substantial leaps in the number of students that are
proficient, which suggests that we are doing something right.”
Proficiency rates at the high school increased in 21 of the 22
areas. Most notable was the increase school-wide in English and
Language Arts to 69.4 percent. Math proficiency at the high school
also increased 9 percent to 61.3 percent overall.
District officials believe that these continued increases are a
reflection of the commitment by staff and the educational service
that students receive.
“We are heading in the right direction and if we can do that
year after year eventually we will be a model for the county,” said
Harding.
Robin Hug can be reached at ww*******@hb*****.com.