With the school year winding down, many students in West Marin have breathed sighs of relief after completing California’s new standardized test, the Smarter Balanced Assessment, late last month. 

As the state tabulates scores for this year’s round of testing, local administrators are hashing out how to interpret last year’s alarmingly low scores—particularly among low-income and primarily Spanish-speaking students. Yet West Marin faired better than the state average last year—in the first year the test was implemented—and administrators said some schools are too small for the results to be meaningful, while at others large swaths of students opted out of the test entirely.

For West Marin’s largest district, Shoreline Unified, about 47 percent of students met or exceeded the test’s standard score for the English-language portion, while 43 percent met the standard for math. The test was administered to third through eighth grades and 11th grade, for a total of about 254 students.

On the lower end, just 37 percent of Shoreline’s fourth-grade students met or exceeded the language standard, while 27 percent did so for math. Those numbers drop precipitously for low-income students, with about 30 percent meeting or exceeding language and 28 percent for math. Likewise, only 10 percent of Spanish-speaking third through seventh-graders tallied met-or-exceeded scores for language and 14 percent for math, with a startling zero percent for sixth and seventh grades meeting standards in language and the same for fifth-graders in math.

Scores for Bolinas-Stinson Unified and Lagunitas School Districts were similar, though Bolinas-Stinson did notch notably higher marks. Of the 68 students for whom scores were counted in that district, 65 percent met or exceeded the language standard and 54 percent did so for math. At Lagunitas, 54 percent of the 71 students whose scores counted for language met or exceeded the standard, while just 29 percent of 73 students did so for math—though scores were only tallied for sixth, seventh and eighth graders.

Nicasio School District did not turn out enough students for the state to count their scores, with only 37 taking the test. 

Though administrators said they would like to see scores improve, West Marin outperformed the state average.  For about 3.2 million test takers in California, 44 percent met or exceeded the language standard and 34 percent did so for math.

Given that last year was the first year Smarter Balanced was implemented, administrators across the board have cautiously taken the scores with a grain of salt. 

Replacing the Standardized Testing and Reporting—or STAR—program, last year’s Smarter Balanced was meant to set a baseline to assess how students progress in the future and should not be compared to STAR scores, according to an educational research group, EdSource. Set for a September release, this year’s scores will be the first set of comparative data to assess the test’s impact.

“We don’t have anything to base it off of,” said Adam Jennings, principal at Shoreline’s Tomales High. “We’re still trying to figure out what the metrics mean. It’s always something to watch, but I don’t know if it’s time to ring alarm bells yet.”

John Carroll, the superintendent for both Bolinas-Stinson and Lagunitas, noted that small student populations at those districts make Smarter Balanced a moot point when evaluating how much students are learning. Bolinas-Stinson this year enrolled about 100 students, while Lagunitas had about 280.

“In a bigger school district, if you see a dearth of scores you might change your curriculum,” he said. “But we just can’t do that here. In Lagunitas, for instance, what I find helpful is that if I see a kid who is struggling in math or language arts, that might be when I ask a teacher, ‘What do you think here?’”

The test is even less relevant for many students at Lagunitas, where only four students out of 52 in the district’s Open Classroom elected to take the test and only 95 out of 146 did so in the Montessori and Middle schools. Huge opt-outs from the test coincided with a damning resolution passed last May by the district’s board that declared that Lagunitas trustees object to all forms of standardized testing and called on the state legislature to rescind laws and regulations requiring school districts to participate in testing.

“In general, not a lot of value is placed on standardized testing in this district,” Mr. Carroll said. “In fact, it’s more like the students opt-in.”

Aside from voluminous opt-outs and the difficulty of assessing academic learning through Smarter Balanced scores, Shoreline’s numbers highlight a troubling gap between students from middle and low-income families. 

This school year, over 60 percent out of roughly 170 students at West Marin School qualifed as low-income, according to principal Matt Nagle. For him, closing the economic achievement gap is a top priority. He also noted that Shoreline is not alone.

“The gap did dramatically increase statewide between [low-income] students and those who have more financial resources and parents with higher educational levels,” he said. “I’m focused on what we’re going to do, which is target those kids who have not reached the advanced or nearly-advanced level and ensure that kids are making progress year to year.”

For his part, Mr. Jennings is tasked with determining why absenteeism at Tomales High remains unsettlingly high. This school year, about 45 percent of students missed 10 percent or more of their classes, compared to just over 60 percent the prior year. He said he is unsure why so many classes are being missed.

“That’s a number that really stuck out to us,” he said during a board of trustees meeting earlier this month. “We’re trying to figure out what’s going on.”

Others, meanwhile, have wondered whether a focus on attendance has fallen to the wayside at Shoreline, which does not receive state funding based on average daily attendance, as do many public schools. Rather, as a basic-aid district, the bulk of its budget depends on property tax revenues.

“I bet a lot of those proficiency levels would go up if classes were being attended,” Trustee Jane Healy said at the
meeting.