Statewide Indicators look beyond test scores to support student success

San Leandro Unified School District in partnership with the State of California launched a new, flexible tool allowing the public to see how well students within a district or school are performing on a variety of indicators including test scores, graduation rates, suspension rates, English learner progress and college/career readiness. Looking at more data and more meaningful information helps identify a district or school’s strengths and weaknesses and highlights performance gaps between groups of learners.

There are two sets of indicators, local and state, used to measure a district’s performance under the new state mandates. The state has prescribed indicators that every district is evaluated against and each local district chooses additional indicators to include. This new evaluation system allows schools and district to be measured in a more holistic way, ensuring local goals and objectives are considered in the evaluation matrix.

SLUSD’s state and local data dashboards are posted on the district website, allowing the user to filter data by various sub-groups, providing transparency in how progress is measured in support of continuous improvement. These changes provide an unprecedented opportunity for parents and community members to be active partners with educators in shaping the ways their schools are educating all students.

The dashboard reports on growth to show a school’s trajectory over time and filters the data by different student populations, including by racial groups, foster and homeless youth, and children from low-income families. This information is intended to focus attention on multi-year trends and analyze disparities among different groups. Statewide, these changes are meant to transform our public education system by raising the bar for learning for all students, empowering local communities, targeting funding based on student needs, and improving transparency in how progress is measured.

In the coming weeks, SLUSD will have a series of open meetings to discuss our progress towards both our local and state indicators as well as discuss our 2018-2019 future Local Accountability Action Plan (LCAP). We encourage the public to attend these meetings to better understand our progress, future goals and where we need to align and focus resources. Dates, times and locations of our community engagement events will be posted on the district website.

“At SLUSD we know our schools’ success goes beyond test scores and we are excited to share a more accurate snapshot of our accomplishments and areas where improvement is needed. We hope our parents and broader community review the data dashboard in order to become more informed partners and help us reach our goal of providing excellent teaching and learning for all our students,” said Mike McLaughlin, SLUSD Superintendent.