FUSD Middle School Scores Nothing to Celebrate
Note: The purpose of this article is not to denigrate or embarrass any teacher or site administrator in FUSD. It is to point out some fundamental flaws in in the district's implementation of its academic and behavioral initiatives. Do to a lack of understanding of the Common Core standards progression, and a refusal to consider alternate methods and viewpoints, the district is in a deep hole and shows no signs of getting out.
Despite recent claims in the Fresno Bee that Fresno Unified is on the "right track", FUSD middle school scores on the recent SBAC may tell a different story. In the first place, It's fine to boast about all grade levels improving, but if seen in the context of how poorly we did in our "baseline "year, we pretty much had nowhere to go but up. But we were especially low in the middle schools on the 2015 test, so let's take a look at their "improvement".
Here’s a breakdown of the Total Fresno Unified results for meeting or exceeding standards:
2015 Total ELA (English Language Arts): 27% Total Math: 18%
2016 Total ELA: 31% Total Math: 22%
Now let's look at the middle school scores for that same year:
2015 Total ELA 7th Grade: 26% 8th Grade: 28%
2016 Total ELA 7th Grade: 28% 8th Grade: 32%
So we "went up at each grade level" by 2% for 7th, and 4% for 8th.
2015 Total Math 7th Grade: 16% 8th Grade: 15%
2016 Total Math 7th Grade: 19% 8th Grade: 17%
This time we went up by 3% in 7th and 2 % in 8th. Ok, neither are at the district percentage, but they did go up.
But now let's look at the 2016 scores of individual schools, who are not identified out of respect for the hard work being done at all of those sites. But there is a problem.
SCH 7th ELA 7th Math 8th ELA 8th Math
A 38 28 34 20 (Top performing middle school in FUSD, 20%)
B 17 9 17 11
C 14 5 20 3
D 18 12 19 9
E 15 8 24 8
F 20 10 31 16
G 10 4 13 1
H 18 18 29 15
I 28 10 28 6
J 15 7 32 11
Out of ten schools' 7th grade ELA scores, only 1 is at or above the District's total ELA percentage of 31%. Out of the 9 remaining, 2 are at 20% or above. The remaining 7 are all below 20%. This means that more than 80% of 7th grade students at 7 out of 10 FUSD middle schools are not meeting standards.
Out of 10 schools' 8th grade Math scores, NONE is at or above the District's total Math percentage of 22%. Out of the 10, 1 is at 20% or above. The remaining 9 are all below 20%. This means that more than 80% of 8th grade students at 10 out of 10 FUSD middle schools are not meeting standards. in addition, 5 of these schools are scoring at less than 10% and 2 are scoring at less than 5%.
7 out of 10 of these schools scored at or sightly above 90% NOT MEETING standards.
Still think FUSD is on the right track? I sure don't. At our celebratory "improvement" rate of 4%, it would take 10 years for most of these schools to get to 50% in math.
Am I wrong? Please comment and tell me why. Is this fixable? Yes, but not given current district priorities. For more on this, read the next post.
Next time: Why this is happening and what can we do.
