Berkeley Unified School District, or BUSD, students achieved stronger test results in comparison to 2024. This narrowed the testing gap among student groups, according to the California School Dashboard website.
When the state first launched the dashboard eight years ago, several BUSD student groups regularly appeared in the red bracket and below average categories in English language arts, or ELA, mathematics, college and career readiness, and English learner progress — particularly African American students, students with disabilities, English learners and socioeconomically disadvantaged students.
However, despite narrowing in comparison to previous years, gaps in dashboard academic performance levels among student groups do remain.
“It reflects the progress, partnership, and unwavering commitment of our entire community, and it lifts up the hard work and dedication of our educators, site leaders, and both site and central staff”, saidBerkeley Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel in a press release referring to the results.
This year, while most underserved students still scored below standard in ELA, math and college and career readiness, there was not a single student group reported in the red category of the California dashboard’s color scales, which includes red, orange, yellow, green and the highest scale, blue.
Student groups who were previously in the red zone last year climbed to orange and yellow levels.Meanwhile, white, Filipino, Asian and multiracial student groups maintained high performance levels, and Hispanic groups crossed into the blue level after years of remaining in the yellow level.
“Latin/x students advanced into the Blue performance level in ELA, reflecting the focused work happening in classrooms across our district,” Morthel said in the press release.
Latine students are now performing alongside white, Asian, Filipino and multiracial student groups in the blue category, being 15.7 points above standard in ELA.However, gaps are still evident, as multiracial groups are 82.3 points above standard and white groups lead with 86.5 points above standard.
The dashboard shows unhoused students were 124.7 points below standard this year in math, but that their score increased by 26.3 points in comparison to last year. English learners are reported to be 36.5 points below standard in ELA, but their scores increased by 15.1 points this year.
Overall, performance increased among all student groups compared to previous years and as a whole,BUSD students were above average in all academic categories, residing in the blue categories for ELA , math and college and career preparedness. In addition, scoring in the green category for English learner progress.
“We celebrate all that we have done, while recognizing that we still have much work ahead of us,” Morthel said in the press release.