API scores continue
upward momentum, place district 12th in county
By Lori Bledsoe
The Alpine Sun
ALPINE — The Annual Percentage Index Scores have been
released from the State of California and Alpine is firmly over
800 in the overall score for the district. This is good news for
the district, as it raises the bar on our students’ academic
achievement, pushing Alpine schools up to a ranking of 12th place
among the 41 San Diego County school districts.
“I am very pleased with the trends that we are seeing,
the trend has been upward with a steady growth which is reducing
the number of the students who are not progressing to
proficiency,” said Greg Ryan, Alpine Union School District
superintendent. “Our teaching staff is determining what is most
important to teach to our students, and this is what we are
focusing on.”
This growth in achievement scores is an optimistic sign
for all our Alpine schools. Boulder Oaks stepped up their scores
climbing 11 points to achieve a new high of 865, and Shadow Hills
gained 14 points to reach 836. Alpine Elementary dropped slightly
this year, but maintains a healthy 826, as does Mountain View
Learning Academy. Joan Mac Queen Middle School strove ahead in
scores as well, raising their schools score from last year’s 803
to 817.
Deanne Jeffreys, Principal of Boulder Oaks is very
happy with the increase in her school’s API scores.
“We’re really excited. We are 11 points ahead of last
year’s score and we are 70 points ahead over the last two years,”
Jeffreys said. “We have an incredible staff and very involved
community here at Boulder Oaks. We are really focused on knowing
each child by name and making sure each child is successful. It’s
really important to us.”
“I am really proud to be part of a district that is
progressing,” she added.
Principal of Shadow Hills, Cyril Reinicke said, “I’m
very proud of our school staff for working very hard with students
as well as parents to further our students achievement. Our goal
is to have a continuing increase in number of advanced and
proficient students.”
Reinicke attributes his schools success to the school’s
plan in conjunction with the Shadow Hills School Site Council. He
says that there are five goals that they focus on to implement and
monitor, and keep track of student achievement.
Three examples that he gives are; developing powerful
mathematic vocabulary, as well as science vocabulary, monitoring
basic skills in mathematics, and implementing the school’s Writing
Committee’s commitment to standardize quality writing construction
across the grades.
“This takes a unified effort of all the students as
well as staff. The more robustly the staff works with common goals
the more student achievement will increase,” he said.
Craig Champion, principal of Mountain View Learning Academy
agrees.
“Our success as a district is largely due to the
concerted efforts of our dedicated teaching staff and our involved
parents, he said.
MVLA scores dropped from their phenomenal score last
year, but the school is still happy with its score that was well
over the 800 target range; at 826. The size of MVLA’s small school
population number has a huge impact on their statistical numbers.
Ryan agrees that MVLA’s scores are highly affected by
class size and the number of students tested. He said that when a
schoolhouses less than 100 students, that can result in vast
fluctuations in overall scores. This is due to the small sampling
that the scoring panel has to choose from.
“At MVLA, I am more interested in looking individual
student scores, than the score of the school as a whole. This is
because one student having a bad day can affect the outcome of the
whole school’s score,” Ryan said.
|
School |
2005 API |
2006 API |
Alpine Union School District
Alpine Elementary
Boulder Oaks Elementary
Shadow Hills Elementary
Joan Mac Queen Middle School
Mountain View Learning Academy |
828
826
865
836
817
826 |
825
846
854
824
803
896 |
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