California still lags in student writing skills
Three-quarters of state's eighth-graders score at or below basic level. News is worse for L.A. Educators cite number of English-learners in classrooms.
Despite progress, California schools remain mired near the bottom of the latest national assessment of students' writing ability, largely because the state has so many immigrants who learn English as a second language.
Los Angeles schools, in particular, showed sharp gains in the latest edition of the "Nation's Report Card," issued Thursday by the U.S. Department of Education. But those improvements still left the city's students far below the national average in writing abilities, at least in part because the Los Angeles Unified School District has hundreds of thousands of students who are learning English.
Los Angeles students can be grateful for the existence of Cleveland, because it was the only big city whose students scored worse overall.
"These results show us that too many of our English learners are underperforming, and we have much work ahead to close this gap," said state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell.
The "Nation's Report Card," the nickname given to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, is conducted periodically in several subjects. Thursday's was for writing only and was based on tests conducted last year among a sampling of eighth- and 12th-graders in public and private schools nationwide.
If it were truly a student's report card, it is tempting to say, it would come home crumpled deep inside an overstuffed backpack, far from the eyes of many parents.
The report makes clear that many American students have barely a basic grasp on the written expression of English, with just over a third of eighth-graders and fewer than one-quarter of 12th-graders scoring at or above the "proficient" level in writing.
Private school students scored higher than public school students, and Catholic school students scored the highest of all.
In California, fully three-quarters of all eighth-graders performed at or below the "basic" level; in Los Angeles, 87% were at or below basic. Too few 12th-graders were tested to break out the results below the national level.
Nationally, and at the local level, educators preferred to accentuate the positive. Los Angeles Unified officials focused on the district's large jump in achievement from the last assessment, in 2002.
Among L.A. Unified students, 77% scored at or above the "basic" level in 2007, up from 64% in 2002. Even more impressive was the leap among those identified as English language learners: The proportion scoring basic or above soared from 31% to 52%.
