El Marino Language School, Culver City’s blue ribbon campus, enhanced its historic reputation as the community’s academic champion when statewide test scores in English and math were reported this week.
Farragut Elementary was a respectable runnerup.
Digesting Culver City’s final scores in the context of the state scores, Dr. Josh Arnold, rounding out his first week as vigorous new superintendent of the School District, said that he and the teaching staffs began to analyze the massive, sometimes esoteric, data.
“We went over the results as part of our Welcome Back together as an entire staff,” he said. “We also had an opportunity in the first couple days of school for teachers to start to pore over their data on student achievements by grade level and content teams.
“They could take a look at what they want to do,” said Dr. Arnold, “to enhance student learning from year to year.
“It is a powerful tool to have this data.”
A select number of students at each participating – from grades 3 through 8, and from grade 11 — underwent testing in both subjects. The objective was to determine, according to a specific standard, Common Core, if they are on track for college.
Common Core debuted with a splash a couple years ago amidst notable controversy.
While fewer than half of the 3.2 million participating students met or surpassed an acceptable level, that was a slight improvement over last year, believe it or don’t. English scores were up 4 percent, math by 3 percent.
Unsurprisingly, in Culver City and statewide, student scores in English consistently were higher than math.
“That may be,” said the mother of a fourth grader, “because they use English every day, not so much with math.”
Racially, the familiar huge disparities were reinforced. As the Los Angeles Times noted:
“Overall, 73 percent of Asian-Americans — the highest-scoring group — met English standards. Just 31 percent of black students did the same.
“That gap was even wider in math, where 67 percent of Asian students met the math standards, versus 18 percent of black students.
“The same was true in L.A. Unified, where black students both had the lowest scores of any racial group and made the smallest gains.”
With El Marino straddling the mountaintop, here is the numerical story:
El Marino – 81 percent met or surpassed math standards, 80 percent in English.
Farragut – 74 percent in math, 75 percent in English
El Rincon – 44 percent in math, 50 percent in English
La Ballona – 37 percent in math, 50 percent in English
Lin Howe – 51 percent in math, 50 percent in English
Culver City Middle School – 48 percent in math, 66 percent in English
Culver City High – 35 percent in math, 78 percent in English
Culver Park High – 0 percent in math, 13 percent in English.
