Berkeley Unified School District, or BUSD, students met and exceeded state standards for English Language Arts, or ELA, and math proficiency in the 2024-2025\u00a0school year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, or CAASPP, is the exam used to assess proficiencies in ELA and math for third through eighth grade students, as well as high school juniors, using the Smarter Balanced Summative Assessments. This was the fourth year in a row that BUSD has met or exceeded standards and seen \u201cconsecutive growth,\u201d according to a BUSD press release.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe headline continues to be that our students are (showing) steady growth and progress across the tested areas,\u201d said BUSD Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel. \u201cWe know that we still have a lot of work to do, but we are encouraged to see steady progress across grade levels.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to CAASPP results, BUSD students continued to outscore students in Alameda County and in California overall, scoring 23% higher than other state students in ELA and 29% higher in math.<\/p>\n
In math, 66% of BUSD students met or exceeded standards, a 2% increase from the prior year and a 5% increase over a two-year period. Their counterparts at Oakland Unified School District, or OUSD, and San Francisco Unified School District, or SFUSD, scored significantly lower. About 27% of students in OUSD and approximately 46% of students in SFUSD performed at the same level.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last school year, 72% of BUSD students met or exceeded the standard in ELA, a 2% increase from the prior year and more than a 4% increase over a two-year period.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In contrast, only about 33% of students in OUSD performed at the same level of proficiency, along with about 53% of SFUSD students. Over the past 10 years, Berkeley students have performed better than students at both districts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
BUSD student populations who historically have not scored highly on CAASPP or other exams demonstrated \u201cmeaningful progress this year, with notable gains at specific grade levels,\u201d according to the press release.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ford Morthel added that the district has used many strategies, including common assessments, professional development and implementation of literacy curriculums to help further growth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe upward trends, particularly in literacy, reflect the deep systems-level work that we\u2019ve engaged in \u2026 and this cohesive and increasing alignment that we have around the district (and) around instruction,\u201d said Lena Sweeney, director of Berkeley Research, Evaluation & Assessment at BUSD.<\/p>\n
However, not all student demographics saw an increase in proficiency. Overall math proficiencies for Black students declined by 5%, as well as overall test scores for Latino English language learners.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When looking at economically disadvantaged students, almost half were classified as having minimal or developing proficiency in ELA, according to EdSource. More than half of those students were also classified under the same categories when measuring math proficiency.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are still very much not satisfied, but we are excited about what we\u2019re seeing,\u201d Ford Morthel said. \u201cWe are committed to continuous improvement, and I do trust and believe that we will continue to improve and make good on our promise to students and families.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Berkeley Unified School District, or BUSD, students met and exceeded state standards for English Language Arts, or ELA,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[6765,33192,33194,9313,33196,143,145,144,3272,33193,33195],"class_list":["post-52307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-berkeley-unified-school-district","tag-california-assessment-of-student-performance-and-progress","tag-california-board-of-education","tag-enikia-ford-morthel","tag-lena-sweeney","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-oakland-unified-school-district","tag-san-francisco-unified-school-district","tag-smarter-balanced-summative-assessments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}