STATE TEST SCORES IMPROVE AMID PANDEMIC SETBACKS

LAUSD and Compton Unified schools are among the high fliers for progress

- By Howard Blume and Jenny Gold

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

(AL SEIB For The Times)

California student test scores remain lower than before the pandemic, but are trending upward, with the Compton and L.A. school districts among those with especially strong growth and results that have surpassed pre-pandemic levels.

Against this backdrop of progress, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday signed legislation mandating that phonics must be emphasized when teaching the state’s youngest students how to read, a sweeping effort to elevate lagging skills and raise student achievement.

On the statewide tests, which were taken in the spring, 48.8% of students scored as “proficient” or “advanced” in English Language Arts, a gain of 18 percentage points from the spring of 2024, which built on smaller gains from the previous year. Still, the percentage scoring as advanced or proficient was 2.1 percentage points lower than in 2018-19, the last full year before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The trend was similar for math, with fewer students advanced or proficient overall.

In math, 37.3% of tested students scored as proficient or advanced, again an increase of 18 percentage points from 2024. And 2024 was 0.9% percentage point better than 2023. However, the percentage of proficient students was lower than pre-pandemic, by 2.4 percentage points.

A statement from the California Department of Education characterized the results as “modest increases at a higher rate than the year prior, suggesting growing momentum.”