San Diego Unified High Schoolers: Getting Great Grades But Troubling Test Scores | Voice of San Diego
At the School of Creative and Performing Arts, a magnet school that draws students from across the district, 96 percent of juniors passed science classes during the 2022-23 school year. At Lincoln High, 86 percent of students passed English classes. At Madison High, 85 percent passed math classes.
The scores should be reassuring. They seem to show most students at these three San Diego Unified high schools are excelling.
At the School of Creative and Performing Arts, however, only 16 percent of juniors met state science standards. At Lincoln only 23 percent met state English standards. At Madison, only 13 percent met math standards. Those are gaps of about 80, 63 and 72 percentage points respectively.
The disparities between test scores and grades are significant, according to an analysis by Voice of San Diego. They also aren t limited to certain schools. Across the district, wide gaps exist between the percentage of juniors passing classes and the percentage meeting state standards. Juniors grades were analyzed because they are the only high schoolers who take state standardized tests.
The results come as schools are still recovering from the pandemic. Concerns about new, looser grading standards are on the rise. San Diego Unified officials insist grades and tests scores measure different things. Still, parents may be receiving misleading messages about how well their kids are doing.
How mysterious. What could explain this.