Home Antioch Education Trust-West Gives Antioch Unified “D+”

Education Trust-West Gives Antioch Unified “D+”

by ECT

Antioch Unified School District

Education Trust-West sent out report cards this week on five Contra Costa School Districts which included Antioch Unified and Pittsburg Unified School Districts. Antioch received a D+ while Pittsburg received a C-. Neither Brentwood or Oakley were included in the grading.

ANTIOCH: Overall grade: D+ (up from D in 2011)

  • Performance among students of color: C (up from D in 2011)
  • Performance among low-income students: C (up from D in 2011)
  • Improvement among students of color: D (same, but rank of 128 up from 135)
  • Improvement among low-income students: D (same, but rank of 127 up from 129)
  • Achievement gap between African-American and white students: D (up from F)
  • Achievement gap between Latino and white students: B (up from C in 2011)
  • College eligibility among students of color: F (rank 135 of 142)
  • High school graduation among students of color: D (rank 129 of 143)

http://reportcards.edtrustwest.org/district-data?county=Contra+Costa&district=Antioch+Unified&report_year=2012

PITTSBURG: Overall grade: C- (up from D+ in 2010) (No data from 2011)

  • Performance among students of color: C (up from D in 2010)
  • Performance among low-income students: C (same, rank of 107 up from 110)
  • Improvement among students of color: C (same, but rank dropped to 60 from 48)
  • Improvement among low-income students: C (but rank dropped to 61 from 48)
  • Achievement gap between African-American and white students: C (up from D)
  • Achievement gap between Latino and white students: B (up from C in 2010)
  • College eligibility among students of color: F (rank 134 of 142)
  • High school graduation among students of color: D (rank 137 of 143)

http://reportcards.edtrustwest.org/district-data?county=Contra+Costa&district=Pittsburg+Unified&report_year=2012

About Education Trust-West

About This Site

Just as students receive report cards to measure their performance and progress in school, The Education Trust – West has developed report cards that grade California school districts on how well they serve their Latino, African-American, and low-income students. We provide grades and ranks to the largest unified districts on four key indicators of student performance: overall performance, improvement over a five-year period, the size of achievement gaps, and college readiness.

Our Findings

Most California districts receive Cs and Ds on these District Report Cards, suggesting that they need to place a stronger focus on improving outcomes for their low-income students and students of color.

However, more than half of the districts earn As and Bs for high school graduation, because they graduate 80 percent or more of their African-American and Latino students in four years. This indicator was introduced to the report cards in 2012, along with a change to the college eligibility indicator. The college eligibility grade now represents the percentage of ninth-graders who graduate from high school four years later, having completed the a-g course sequence. In most districts, less than 25 percent of African-American and Latino students meet this mark, earning those districts Ds and Fs.

For maps of grades by geographic region, see our regional resources page, and for profiles of lessons learned from higher poverty, higher performing districts, visit our promising practices page.

How to Read These Report Cards

No single indicator adequately describes student achievement. We use multiple measures to understand how well a district’s low-income students and students of color are faring academically. We focus our analysis on four indicators:

The PERFORMANCE indicator tells us how well low-income students (those eligible for free or reduced price meals) and students of color (African-American and Latino students) score on state tests, as measured by their Academic Performance Index (API) scores. To earn an A, the district must meet or exceed the statewide target API score of 800 (on a 1,000-point scale).

The IMPROVEMENT indicator tells us how much low-income students and students of color have improved over a five-year period, as measured by the sum of year-to-year improvement on the API. To earn an A, the district must have gained at least 100 API points over five years.

The ACHIEVEMENT GAPS indicator tells us how Latino and African-American student achievement compares to white student achievement, measured by the size of the API gap between subgroups. To earn an A, the district must have a 30-point or less gap in achievement between its students of color and their white peers.

The COLLEGE READINESS indicator tells us how many Latino and African-American students are graduating high school in four years, and how many are completing the “a-g” coursework required to be eligible for admission to a UC or CSU campus. To earn an A for graduation rates, the district must post an African-American and Latino graduation rate at or above 90 percent. To earn an A for college eligibility, the district must post an African-American and Latino cohort a-g rate at or above 45 percent. (Note that this indicator changed in 2012.)

How To Use These Report Cards

Education and community leaders can use these report cards to promote more equitable outcomes for California students. Stakeholders can use the data to help benchmark their district’s performance against other districts and to advocate for change. These data, which describe current levels of achievement, should serve as a catalyst for continued and increased investments in programs and strategies aimed at increasing educational opportunity and achievement among the state’s Latino, African-American, and low-income students.

About The Education Trust – West

The Education Trust – West works for the high academic achievement of all students at all levels, pre-K through college. We expose opportunity and achievement gaps that separate students of color and low-income students from other youth, and we identify and advocate for the strategies that will forever close those gaps.

 

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4 comments

JimSimmons42 Apr 6, 2013 - 8:12 am

Seems like it received too high of a grade.

Julio-Antioch Apr 6, 2013 - 9:20 am

To listen to our district employees talk, including trustees on the board, we are straight A’s. I think the board is blind and walking around in a fog created by our superintendent. I don’t know the answers but this tells us our children are failures because of the lack of education we have provided.

Cathy Apr 6, 2013 - 11:17 am

In economics, the cycle of poverty is the “set of factors or events by which poverty, once started, is likely to continue unless there is outside intervention.” Outside intervention seems to be what is needed.

Antioch seems to be doing what they should be doing (they spent only $64 less per student than San Ramon who got a B).

The data from this study reveals that in the highest graded district in Contra Costa (San Ramon) only 3% live in poverty and in Antioch 58% live in poverty. That is 897 students versus 10,945 students that may be dealing with shelter, hunger, safety, transportation and other basic needs issues. These are issues that can hold students back from being able to be prepared to do well in school. For example in a class of say 35 a San Ramon teacher has 1 student dealing with those issues as opposed to in Antioch where a teacher has 10 kids dealing with those same issues. That changes the dynamics of classroom, a school, a district and community.

Balancing helping those in need and those that want & expect to shoot high becomes a huge challenge

Those students living in poverty with in the city of San Ramon make up only 1% of the whole population. Antioch students living in poverty makeup just under 11% of the whole population.

It is hard for a school district, a teacher, or a community to create an environment of excellence when so many are just trying to survive in their worlds. How can we stop this cycle?

Some would say that it is up to the individual to change that cycle and for the most part I agree. BUT I think that when you have a concentration of people barely surviving it serves our society as a whole to assist those that may not have the resources, knowledge or understanding of how to break out of the cycle. In the long run by ignoring these issues crime goes up, dependence on government support increases, our workforce declines, our need for more prisons & police increases, and so much more.

I wonder if in the long run helping people break the cycle of poverty would be cheaper than all the costs of the alternative.

Julio-Antioch Apr 6, 2013 - 12:34 pm

I think it would help if we change the way we teach some of these kids. Immersion in the English language does not seem to work. We cannot talk with the parents or grand parents because they don’t speak English. It is time to change that so our teachers speak Spanish with all of these folks, get on the same track and help these children. I have taken this to the school district and was told a resounding no. So, they like it like it is.

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