The API should provide information to parents, educators and the public about how California's public schools and their students are doing academically.
Instead, the API is confusing, expectations for student academic improvement are minimal and it masks achievement gaps among students. The bottom line is that our students are on the losing end.
The state should abandon the API accountability system and, instead, focus on raising every student's achievement to grade-level proficiency, especially by spreading the best practices of high-poverty, high-performing schools.
Here are the problems with the API:
"Growth targets," a school improvement required by the state each year, are set way too low. Under the way API growth targets are calculated, schools can successfully meet their incremental growth targets each year, but it could take decades for them to reach the state's goal of an 800 API. Worse, the state acknowledges that an 800 API is still a score well below grade level for all students. This makes no sense because grade-level proficiency is defined by an API of 875.
The API hides achievement gaps because a school's API score is one number that averages the test scores of all students in the school on the statewide standards test. A few students often raise the average enough so the school meets its API growth targets but, at the same time, that school still could have subgroups of students -- usually poor, ethnic minority students -- stagnating or even declining in academic proficiency.
For example, an elementary school in Contra Costa County nearly quadrupled its API growth target, but the improvement was due to jumps in test scores among white and Filipino students, who brought the school-wide average higher, while African American and Latino students continued to score at low levels and even declined in grade-level proficiency.
This school is but one example. Nearly 1,000 schools in California met their API growth target in 2005, but had student subgroups that failed to meet the target.
So what's the solution? Replace the API.
Instead, the state of California should set higher expectations for improvement, focus on grade-level proficiency as measured by the California Standards Test (CST), report grade-level proficiency statistics to parents and the public, and let high-performing schools, particularly those with low-income and ethnic minority student populations, serve as role models for struggling schools.
To meet No Child Left Behind reporting requirements, California already reports CST grade-level proficiency data annually to the federal government broken out by student subgroup. This data is publicly available but the state prefers to focus on API scores instead.
We have taken that CST grade-level proficiency data, created a database, and thus know from evaluating CST data that high-performing schools hold educators and students accountable for higher rates of improvement than the state requires.
Los Medanos Elementary School in Pittsburg is a good example. According to the data it reports to the state Department of Education, nearly half the students are low-income and 52 percent are English learners, yet 49 percent of the low-income and 42 percent of the English-learner students are proficient in reading for their grade level. Consider that in 2002, those same groups of students at Los Medanos were performing at 15 percent in reading for low-income students and 18 percent for English learners.
This approach to student learning is consistent among high-performing schools. We know from our research that educators at those schools hold students to high expectations, no matter what their ethnic background, poverty level or language barrier is. Excuses for failure are not accepted. They teach to the state's world-class standards. They frequently assess students to ensure they understand what is being taught and if they don't, they get struggling students immediate help. And they constantly evaluate and adjust teaching practices -- day by day and week by week -- to ensure what they are doing in the classroom is working.
California's state school accountability system is an illusion. While API scores rise, 6 out of 10 students in grades 2 through 11 score below grade-level proficiency in English and math on state tests, while more than 7 out of 10 African-American and Latino students score below grade-level.
It is impossible to have true accountability unless everyone knows what they are accountable for, and the API falls well short of that goal. The focus must be on getting all kids to grade-level. It is a goal that is clear, understandable and achievable.
James S. Lanich is president of California Business for Education Excellence and Lance T. Izumi is director of education studies at the Pacific Research Institute. They are the co-authors of the recent Pacific Research Institute study "Failing Our Future: The Holes in California's School Accountability System and How to Fix Them."
