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Public Information - Press ReleaseRelease
Date: Immediate GGUSD Outpaces State and County Averages in Schools With APL Improvement The Garden Grove Unified School District outdid the state and county averages in the number of schools exceeding improvement goals on the 2002-03 Academic Performance Index (API) rankings as released Friday, Oct. 24. All but two, or 97 percent, of 65 GGUSD schools surpassed their growth targets for last school year compared to a 78-percent average for California and a 94-percent average for Orange County. This is an increase for the district of 36 percent above Five district schools were ranked among the county’s 10 schools with the largest gains since the inception of the API in 1999. Skylark was the most improved in the county with overall growth of 250 points. Other GGUSD schools in the leading 10 were Marshall (+217), Morningside (+204), Russell (+198), and Carrillo (+190) elementary schools. “The API results support other performance data indicating that student achievement is continuing to improve,” explained Supt. Laura Schwalm. “I am very proud of our schools, our teachers, and the work they are doing. The challenge we face is to demonstrate continued progress in subsequent years.” The API is a numeric index that ranges from a low of 200 to a high of 1000. A school’s annual growth target is set at 5 percent of the difference between the school’s base API set in 2002 and the statewide performance goal of 800. In 2003, nine district schools recorded API scores greater than 800, triple the number of the year before. To reach their API targets, schools must meet their 5 percent schoolwide goal and demonstrate comparable improvement for significant subgroups such as students from low-income families and ethnic groups at the school. For elementary and intermediate schools, API growth was calculated using a combination of weighted results from the California Standards Tests (80 percent) and the new California Achievement Test 6th Edition (20 percent) given last spring. High school API growth was based on the Standards Tests (73 percent), the CAT6 (12 percent), as well as the California High School Exit Examination (15 percent). The 2002-03 API growth reports are available on the California Department of Education’s website at: http://api.cde.ca.gov
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