Valley Oak – in the act of creation

The Context

It is not seemly for one school in a district, a district which purports to serve all the children, to start jumping up and down in order to stand out in the crowd. However, extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. There are many confusing numbers being bandied about describing the performance of Davis schools, but the one that really matters in the discussion of the importance of Valley Oak requires some unveiling.

When it comes to measuring school performance, our one instrument for comparing apples to apples in California is the Standardized Testing and Reporting, or STAR test. Below are the 2006 performance numbers for the subgroup around which is swirling the greatest amount of energy in defense of Valley Oak, the Economically Disadvantaged (ED) population. This is but one aspect of STAR data, but it is valuable to examine this particular subset in this circumstance.

To view the source of the numbers given below and to see the complete results of each specific school in the district or state, go to the STAR Report Panel website. In the interest of defending Valley Oak while preferring to not blast our sister sites, the reader may visit that link if they wish to see site-specific data. Otherwise, district elementary schools are identified by letter in the table below.

Data in Table 1 is limited to the 6th graders, who as a group have spent the longest time at their respective sites and presumably represent the best work of the schools relative to the ED population. Valley Oak has 22% of the ED 6th graders in the district, and they are clustered in the traditional neighborhood sections, as the self-contained GATE classes tend to not serve that demographic. Therefore, those twenty-five 6th graders make up approximately 40% of the traditional 6th grade sections at Valley Oak. The approximation allows for the possibility of an extremely small number of ED students in the GATE program. The other schools cited below ((A-D) do not have self-contained GATE, therefore their ED population is distributed amongst all 6th grade sections. The remaining three elementary schools do not possess statistically significant populations of ED students, so no data is available.

The Numbers

2006 ED 6th Grade Subgroup, % scoring proficient or advanced

All DJUSD (109 students): 38% English/LA and in math, 39%

School A (13 students): 46% English/LA and in math, 62%

School B (17 students): 18% English/LA and in math, 29%

School C (17 students): 35% English/LA and in math, 24%

School D (13 students): 46% English/LA and in math, 31%

Valley Oak (25 students): 46% English/LA and in math, 50%

 

Conclusion: While the performance of ED students across the district appears to be wildly variable and hardly admirable, Valley Oak, with 40% of its traditional 6th grade classes populated at the highest rate of ED, nearly double that of other sites brings the most students to proficient and above levels.

 

Another critical factor is the course of improvement as ED children progress through the grades. One would hope that children, particularly those learning English, would demonstrate increasing mastery over time, leading to more students at levels of proficient and above at the progressively higher grades.

When one considers data longitudinally, following students through the years, it is a more complicated picture, and the range of performance between schools becomes more variable. District and site data are offered below. ELA = English-Language Arts. Number of students tested are in parentheses, % given for those students scoring profient or above:

…………………… 2003 3rd Graders ……..2006 6th Graders (same basic population)

All DJUSD …….(101) 22% ELA/Math 35%……….(109) 38% ELA/Math 39%

School A …………(12) 25% ELA/Math 64%…………(13) 46% ELA/Math 62%

School B …………(12) 17% ELA/Math 17%………….(17) 18% ELA/Math 29%

School C …………(11) 18% ELA/Math 18%…………(17) 35% ELA/Math 24%

School D …………(13) 23% ELA/Math 31%…………(13) 46% ELA/Math 31%

Valley Oak………..(22) 27% ELA/Math 36%…………..(25) 46% ELA/Math 50%

[Totals of students do not equal the district total due to other sites whose ED subgroups were too small to be statistically significant.]

Conclusion: Valley Oak stands ALONE among district elementary sites in bringing the most students the furthest distance in both English/Language Arts and Math.

Pop Quiz:

(1) Why does your Board of Education want to close the most effective elementary school it “runs” when neither it nor its district staff can replicate the Valley Oak numbers at any other site?

(2) If the only facility in the district producing these results is Valley Oak, why is it that a task force with the words “Best Uses” in its title could find no value in them? Precisely which values are at the heart of their determination?