Test scores rose in California, but there is still work to be done

All right. Welcome back. Student test scores are better this year, according to the latest state data. However, more than half of California's 5.8 million K through 12 students continue to read below grade level and only 38 percent met grade level expectations in math. Both of those numbers are less than a one percent increase from last year. Joining us this morning to talk about it, Alix Gallagher from the Policy Analysis for California Education Research Center at Stanford's Graduate School of Education. Good morning. Thank you for joining us. Good morning. Thanks for having me. So talk about what do you think is going on with these test scores? I mean, a little bit of improvement, but not great. Yeah. I mean, I do think, first of all, it's important to really recognize the improvement. When you talk about a state as large as California, as you said, 5.8 million students, it's really not easy to make progress that is extensive year after year. So we have to recognize that improvement, but also understand it's very far from where we want to be. Are we still catching up from COVID? What are some of the factors involved in this? Yeah, we are definitely still catching up from COVID, though that's not all that's going on. Actually, internationally, we can take a look back to the mid-2010s. And internationally, there's been a different performance at that time. And that makes some people notice that there's a correlation between the rise of smartphones and an international decline in test scores. But it's also very clear that that's not the full picture, that when COVID happened, it accelerated those declines. And even since COVID, we see some things that might be lingering effects of COVID. When you talk with district and school leaders, teachers, they talk with you about increased incidences of really challenging behaviors in young students. And we also know from things like Stanford's RAPID survey, which surveys parents with young children in their homes, that there's still ongoing economic and emotional stress that is at elevated levels. And so there's just a lot going on in kids' lives right now, making it challenging for even educators' best efforts to spark major improvements. Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the economic uh impact of this because it it made me wonder when i was looking through the report and the numbers um how much of it i mean right now it is such a tough economy many parents are working long hours they're working extra jobs they have you know two jobs or they're working a side hustle to just try to afford everything so that leaves less time to sit and read with the kids and help them with homework is that part of this it absolutely could be we don't have research that can point and kind of disentangle one factor or another. But we know this is a very hard time for families right now. And those the challenges that families have end up showing up in school. But there are some places that have made greater improvements than California. And that's a good place for us to look to figure out how to how to better support our schools. Yeah. Talk about some of those things specifically. Where are we doing well? How does California compared to I mean, we're we're all dealing with more screen time, right? No matter around the world. So how does California compare and where are we doing well? Yeah. So I think the places that that people typically talk about looking are places like Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Alabama, which is not normally where Californians tend to think about the comparison line. But Louisiana is actually the only state that currently achievement is higher than going into COVID. And we can take a look at some of the things the state has done there to really support improved instruction in schools, and we can learn lessons from them. So, for example, in literacy, the state trained and provided instructional coaches to every school so that teachers had someone side by side helping them in their classrooms learn how to teach more effectively. We know in literacy there's a real movement to shift the nature of instruction, and Louisiana set things up to support teachers to learn it. In math, they created a program that trained what they called content leads, and they trained several hundred teachers across the state, and those teachers actually got certified by the state in an assessment that helped them learn how to deliver professional development to their peers that helped them implement new types of curricular materials. So these states anchored their efforts in really identifying just one or two really high-quality instructional materials and making sure every classroom teacher got support to teach them well. And those are things that California right now is not doing to support schools. Okay, so hopefully California has some work to do at schools and with teachers. We probably also have some work to do at home. Just before we let you go, some things that you could let parents know to to help our kids succeed and and improve these test scores yeah i mean one thing that that you mentioned is just reading with kids um you also mentioned the fact that math performance is substantially lower than reading and i think um historically and we have folks who thinks i'm not a math person uh we need to fix that mindset everyone can be a math person and one of the things parents can do is talk with kids about math i will say as a parent having my kids set the table or do things like say you know hey here's some strawberries uh can you make sure everyone gets two how many did you give um and even very very young working math in to kind of daily routines and conversations can help kids show up to school with a comfort in math and some basic understandings of of the operations and and math in our world i love that where we're heading into the holidays i do a lot of baking and we used to always do a i used math there right okay If we're going to double the recipe and this calls for half a cup, how much do we need? And then we all have home projects. So when you're measuring something to see if a table fits, get the kids in there, too. That's math. It's everyday math. That's math. All right. Alix Gallagher, the Director of Education Policy and Outcomes there at the Education Center at Stanford, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. We appreciate it. Yep.