State student test scores trending upward

California test scores improve but lag behind pre- pandemic levels

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LAUSD Supt. Alberto Carvalho visits Lenicia B. Weemes Elementary on the first day of school in August.

(AL SEIB For The Times)

partment of Education characterized the results as “modest increases at a higher rate than the year prior, suggesting growing momentum.”

State officials highlighted school systems where the results were more impressive, including in L.A. and Compton, the Roseville Joint Union High School District near Sacramento, the Pittsburg Unified School District inland from Oakland and Sanger Unified, east of Fresno.

“Some growth is modest, and some is profound,” said state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, “but in all cases, the data reflects the impact of [state] investments and the hard work of educators to help students succeed. We aspire to achieve even greater student outcomes.”

For six years, educators in California and across the nation have looked to the 2018-19 scores — the last testing before the COVID-19 pandemic — as a benchmark. Closed campuses, economic hardship and disease held back student achievement starting in March 2020. And academic recovery — as measured by test scores — has proved a stubbornly difficult hurdle across the nation, long after students left behind online learning and returned to in-person classes. Even record state and federal funding failed to fuel a quick turnaround.

California showed solid incremental gains from last year to this — and that’s what Newsom focused on, while also criticizing efforts by President Trump to penalize California schools for not following his policy directives.