Lodi fares nicely with API scores

The Lodi Unified School District's Academic Performance Index Growth Report was released on Thursday, showing nearly all of the district's elementary schools improving on standardized test scores and two of the district's four middle schools declining in performance as the others improved.

Many of these schools' scores were delayed earlier this school year due to a data corruption that initially delayed over half of the district's school reports.

No API Growth reports are available yet for the district's three high schools. They will be released sometime in mid-January or February, according to Paula Carroll, director of testing and evaluation at the district office.

The API is the state's most important academic indicator. It measures a school's growth on standardized tests that students take every year.

Out of Lodi's elementary schools, George Washington made the largest jump this year. The school made a 60-point jump in scores. API scores are reported in two phases, first a base report is released in the spring and then that is used to compare a school's growth score, which is reported in the fall. Washington jumped from a 598 base to 658 growth.

Helen Smith -- who was principal of Washington Elementary last year before she moved to Beckman Elementary -- was pleased with the API results.

"We feel great, we feel like were on the right track," Smith said. "We have to keep going in the same direction."

Washington was one of the schools that did not receive their scores in the fall.

"That was hard," Smith said. Not receiving the scores, "was a disappointment. We wanted to know then because we kind of felt we had achieved our goal."

Washington School is a Title I school, meaning it receives federal dollars because a certain proportion of its students live in poverty. Over 300 of Washington Elementary School's students are English Learners as well.

All elementary schools in the district made gains except for Park Lane Elementary and Turner Elementary schools.

Turner has a small school population, which often can lead to erratic test results, said Superintendent Bill Huyett.

"They tend to go up and down," Huyett said.

Huyett was not sure why Park Lane had declined, and said the school had made gains in the past.

Huyett was pleased with the overall growth in test scores but said it was difficult to compare the scores from last year because of a change in tests. The Stanford Achievement Test, edition 9, was replaced by the California Achievement Test, edition 6. Both tests compare students nationally, but could not be compared because both were quite different in complexity and content.

Also, tests that measure California curricular standards have been given more weight when composing the API this year.

Scores for Lodi Unified's middle schools were also reported on Thursday. Both Lodi Middle and Morada Middle schools' growth reports showed negative growth numbers while Delta Sierra and Woodbridge Middle schools improved.

Lodi Middle dropped from a 628 base to a 626 growth. Morada Middle dropped from a 617 base to a 603 growth.

"We look at this over the space of a few years," Huyett said. Sometimes schools would plateau or decline a bit before continuing to improve, he added.

Woodbridge Middle School improved from 630 to 650, and Delta Sierra Middle School improved from 635 to 641, although Delta Sierra did not meet its target of 643.

The district's high school exams are not available because when the California High School Exit Exam was administered last year some of the bubble-in information that parents are responsible for filling in was incorrect, Carroll said.

Carroll attributed the error to confusing forms that went home to parents and said the district was exploring ways of correcting the way student information is taken down.

The API was created in 1999 with the California Public Schools Accountability Act. A nearly complete list of Lodi Unified's API scores can be viewed online.