‘Lipstick on a pig’: Tam Union student test scores rankle trustees – Marin Independent Journal

Trustees of the Tamalpais Union High School District said they will not tolerate the continuing decline in student scores following the 2023-24 state academic achievement tests.

“I don’t want to hear any excuses,” trustee Cynthia Roenisch told administrators who presented the scores at the board meeting on Dec. 3. “We need to set some higher expectations. And we need to hold students accountable.”

Of the 11th-graders in the district who took the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress in the spring, 71.4% met or exceeded their grade-level standard in English. In math, 53.5% met or exceeded the grade-level standard.

In 2022-23, the outcome was 77.1% in English and 58.2% in math.

“Other schools are all in the 80s, like Los Gatos, Saratoga, Acalanes,” Roenisch said, referring to high-achieving school districts in the South Bay. “These scores are concerning for a district of our caliber.””

Trustee Kevin Saavedra agreed.

“There’s pretty much nothing good here,” he said, referring to the eight-page report presented by education administrators Kelly Lara and Paula Berry.

The report noted that district test scores were higher than the statewide average and those at San Rafael City Schools and the Novato Unified School District. But it did not compare Tam Union with the other Bay Area districts that were much higher in scores.

Saavedra said that was misleading.

“Please don’t try to put lipstick on a pig by talking about how we’re doing in comparison with other districts that are not our peers,” he said.

“There’s nothing I saw in this presentation that gives me comfort that we’re not going to be back here a year from now talking about the same thing — either that we’ve flatlined or a possible deterioration,” Saavedra said.

Lara responded that the district has already implemented a series of pre-tests to help students acclimate to standardized tests and to pinpoint where students might need more instruction.

“We are concerned,” she told the trustees. “We don’t find these scores acceptable either.”

Roenisch said pre-tests are not the answer.

“You don’t want to be teaching to tests,” she said.

Instead, Roenisch said, teachers need to do stronger instruction with more accountability. That includes longer, “more vigorous” reading assignments and focused writing tests in class, where students are not able to cheat by getting commercial summaries or using artificial intelligence to summarize what they didn’t read, she said.

“They have to be taught to maintain a focus longer than 30 seconds,” she said.

Lara promised to return to the board in March with a progress update.

“We will do a better job assessing our practices, and seeing where there are gaps,” Lara said.

Berry said the district is also considering adding CAASPP scores that meet or exceed standards to a student’s transcript to make the test more important in a student’s mind.

“We know that some other districts are doing that,” Berry said.

Lara and Berry started the presentation by noting that the district’s participation rate in the CAASPP was 90% this year, up from 70% in 2022-23. The state penalized the district in the California School Dashboard scores that year for the low participation rate.

The participation this year was still below the 95% threshold the state is requiring, trustees said. Redwood High School in Larkspur, with a 96% participation rate, was the only school in the district to have met the threshold.

Trustees said improved participation, while laudable, does not offset the test results.

“You buried the bad news,” Roenisch said.

Leslie Harlander, the board president, agreed.

“You should have started with: What the heck — there’s something else going on here, and we don’t know what it is, and we’re concerned,” she told Lara and Berry.

Harlander said that the board has been talking about test scores for years but is not seeing any results.

“It feels like there’s this big machine grinding out programs, but nothing’s happening,” she said. “There’s always been an excuse. Time’s up.”

Roenisch said she feels that students have lost the ability to focus on reading a full novel or a longer piece of writing. She attributes that to prevalent cellphone and social media use.

“Maybe we should take the school with the lowest scores and do the Yondr trial on them next year,” she said, referring to the company that sells lockable cellphone pouches. The district decided last month against a plan to buy the products.

Jennifer Holden, who won a board seat on Nov. 5 and will take office next week, said the district needs to do a better job notifying parents about the test scores.

“Please tell the parents what’s going on,” Holden, who has three children who attend or attended district schools, said during the public comment period of the meeting. “No parent knows about these things.”