In the state Department of Education’s annual reporting of test results, Berkeley schools showed steady improvement. In all but one Berkeley school that had results, 2010 scores were up on 2009 scores. Not enough students at Berkeley High took the STAR exams last year for the school to receive an Academic Performance Index from the state.
Berkeley Unified School District as a whole improved its API from 767 to 784. The achievement gap between non-white and white students remains large. The API for white students was 911, for African-American students 642, and for Hispanic or Latino students 730. Those results, however, do represent an absolute improvement in all categories: the 2009 APIs were 901 for whites, 621 for African-Americans, and 688 for Hispanic or Latino students.
Among individual schools, the biggest improvement was at King Middle School, where the API rose from 773 to 831. The state’s targeted improvement for King was to reach 778. King’s result gave it a statewide rank of 8, which means that it’s in the top 20% of schools. Schools with similar demographics have a rank of 7.
Two Berkeley schools, Oxford Elementary and Jefferson Elementary, received state ranks of 9, putting them in the top 10% of schools statewide. Oxford’s API was 876 and Jefferson’s was 894.
The detailed API reports can be accessed on the Department of Education site. Here is the summary of the Berkeley results:
