Supplemental Report by the Consent Decree Monitoring Team

Regarding The Achievement Gap and Related Issues

in the San Francisco Unified School District (March 2004)

 

On March 12th, the Consent Decree Monitoring Team submitted a Supplemental Report to Supervising Judge William H. Allsup, United States District Court, Northern District.  The purpose of the document was to supplement the annual summer report (Report #20) with two new sets of interrelated data…one focusing on desegregation and the other on academic achievement.  The new data revealed a persistent and dramatic achievement gap, and thus the majority of the report focused on these realities.

 

These findings are reinforced by new data publicly available and obtained from the CDE Web site regarding the Academic Performance Index (API) base.  We have found since the filing of the Supplemental Report that while SFUSD overall scored higher on the API base than any of these other urban districts, the African American students in SFUSD have the worst API score when compared with their African American counterparts in these other districts.

 

School District

2003 API Base (all races/ethnicities)

2003 API Base – Afr. Amer. Students

San Diego

697

628

Long Beach

682

618

Sacramento City

666

587

Los Angeles

622

573

Oakland

592

552

San Francisco

706 (highest)

542 (lowest)

 

Source – California Department of Education 2003 API Base Reports – District API (visited June 8, 2004)

 

 

Resegregation

 

“…Resegregation is even worse than projected in Report #20.  41-43 schools are severely resegregated now at one or more grade levels, and about 25 schools are now resegregated in their entirety.  These numbers have increased significantly in the past two years, and the trends show no signs of abating…”

 

· Analysis of Resegregation Trends (from the text of the Supplemental Report)

 

The Achievement Gap

 

“…While the District’s overall academic achievement numbers continue to be commendable, and while certain SFUSD schools sites are among the finest examples of top quality education in the state, updated…test score results available on the California Department of Education (CDE) Web site…[indicate the existence of a]…persistent and dramatic achievement gap...  At certain schools, for example, only a handful of African American and/or Latino students are performing at proficient or above – i.e. meeting grade level standards -- on the California Standards Test (CST)…

 

“…[In addition, when compared with their counterparts in other districts throughout the state on the CAT-6], African American students in SFUSD scored lower than African American students statewide at every grade level in reading, and at every grade level in math.  On the CAT-6 reading section, the Latino students in SFUSD scored about the same as the Latino students statewide in reading.  In math, however, SFUSD Latino students scored lower than the statewide Latino student average in every grade except 3rd  and 4th (where they scored one percentile point higher than their statewide counterparts).”

 

· The Parameters of the Achievement Gap (from the text of the Supplemental Report)

 

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· Full Text of March 2004 Supplemental Report

 

· Appendices to March 2004 Supplemental Report

 

 

· Previous Reports of the Consent Decree Monitoring Team (1997-2003)

 

 

 

Please Note:  Links to sections of the report are typically  to PDF files, which require

Adobe Acrobat Reader (free download).