Dixie STAR Results Continue to Grow

Dixie School District students showed strong improvement in all measures in STAR testing last spring.

Judith Arrow, director of educational services for the district, said she has analyzed the results since they were released by the state Department of Education last week and is happy with what she found.

"We continue to see steady growth," Arrow said. "The real wonderful growth we saw was with our English-language learners and the socio-economically disadvantaged."

Arrow said, district wide, students who were categorized as socio-economically disadvantaged increased scores by 56 points, more than any other district in Marin County.

Also encouraging, Arrow said, is Asian and white students' scores have also improved, even though they have been good in past years.

"We are looking at the data much more than we have in the past — it's not just opinion," Arrow said. "It guides our direction of where we are going to go next."

The annual STAR tests serve as a measure of student progress towards academic-proficiency targets. Individual student results are sent home to parents over the summer; individual student results are not available at the school or state level and in no way follow a student. The results are made anonymous and non-trackable at the aggregate level.

School results are used to determine a school's Academic Performance Index – a measure of its performance from year to year. Along with certain yearly goal targets, schools must meet API and graduation targets.

The push to make 100 percent of students proficient, particularly in all racial and economic subgroups, was a key feature of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. When No Child Left Behind is renewed later this year it is expected some of the targets and standards will change.