FUHSD superintendent reviews test scores

Rick Monroe

Special to the Village News

Fallbrook High School students scored well on statewide testing of juniors in the 2020-2021 school year. "We're doing better," Superintendent Ilsa Garza-Gonzalez told board members at the Jan. 24 meeting of the Fallbrook Union High School District.

She cautioned that due to factors surrounding COVID-19, testing participation varied. "Care should be used when interpreting results," she said.

Looking at district demographics, there are 2,155 students in the district's three schools: Fallbrook High School, Ivy High School, and Oasis High School. Ivy is a continuation school and Oasis is for at-home learners, so most of the students attend Fallbrook High School. English language learners represent 14.7% of the students in the district. The district reports that socioeconomically disadvantaged students are 71.6%. There are 14.6% of students with disabilities. The Hispanic population is 67.8% and the White population is 25.5%.

The tests the superintendent reviewed were the CA Assessment of Student Performance and Progress. For most of the test results released, scores were given to compare state, county, and FUHSD students.

Overall, scores were very similar at the state, county and local level. Garza-Gonzalez noted math scores were lower than she hoped, but there was improvement. She said the district is taking action to improve scores on two fronts. First, she said, English Language teachers were focusing more on addressing state standards. Second, the district now requires three years of math rather than two years. Students who took math as a freshman and sophomore were being tested as a junior and may not have retained what they learned in the classroom the previous year.

"We're looking at gains in the future," the superintendent said.

Looking closer at the results, FUHSD did well in the English Language Arts with more than half the students meeting the state standard. The results were broken into four categories: standard exceeded, standard met, standard nearly met, and standard not met. Compared to state and county scores, FUHSD scored highest in standard met, but lowest in standard exceeded. The high score in standard met gave the district equal standing with adding the met and exceeded scores.

Students with disabilities from Fallbrook (28%) scored much higher in meeting or exceeding ELA standards than the state (17%) or county (18%) in language arts.

Comparing scores of socioeconomically disadvantaged students, there was hardly any difference in the percentages for state, county and Fallbrook.

Looking at math scores, the Fallbrook scores (32%) were better than the county (30%) but not as high as the state (34%) for meeting or exceeding the standard. However, statewide, more than 40% of students were below standard in the state, county and Fallbrook. Local students that are in the socioeconomically disadvantaged category scored well in math with 27% of students meeting or exceeding the standard for math, compared to the state and county, each with 23%.

Garza-Gonzalez noted that there were problems with many students in the district being able to take some of the math testing last year because of COVID-19 restrictions.

Current juniors in the district will be taking the tests in coming weeks, she said.

The superintendent added that the assessment is posted on the school's webpage (go to fuhsd.net, under Departments, click on Educational Services, and then on Assessments).