**grumble** Sac Unified School District

[edwardius]

I agree that they system of testing is imperfect. But I also believe that test scores are still pretty useful.

In theory spending on public schools in California is supposed to be roughly equal. But in practice, there are still pretty big differences in educational quality.

If you are spending money to hire school security guard or a campus police officer, that is money the school doesn't have to buy new musical instruments for the school band or to pay for transportation for school athletic teams. Yet if the students don't feel safe at school, how much learning is going to take place? I don't find fault with why the schools are making the choices they are making. But just acknowledging that outcomes are different structurally.

On top of that there is the issue of parental involvement. At some schools if the budget is cut for the school, then the service is no longer provided. If there is no money for an aide to teach it, there is no music, art, computer or science teacher. But in schools with lots of parental involvement either the parents step up and fill in the gap directly by volunteering their time to make up for the lost aides or they fund raise for it. It takes people to run a fireworks booth at the 4th of July, to work in the bingo center, to help out in the car wash, or to participate in the bake sale.

Thus if the district can no longer fund the computer lab, the school PTA will make up the funding cuts.

Part of the reason high scoring schools score better is that these schools still manage to do all of these things in tougher budget situations.

In the low scoring schools, you generally have fairly low levels of parental involvement. Maybe the parents have good reason for this. Perhaps they don't speak English. Perhaps they are single parents and need to work multiple jobs. Just the same the overall educational quality just isn't as good. In these schools, the teachers are already overwhelmed. There aren't other people around to help out.

In these schools its much easier to fall through the cracks. If your child is dyslexic maybe no one catch it or it gets noticed later. The kids with special needs might not be directed to resources to help them.

In the schools with lots of parental involvement, the parents do a better job of making the bureaucracy work. At higher performing schools there may be less students who need Individualized Education Plans, but the parents of the kids who do need them are much more likely to know about them and have their kids in them. So even though a program is availble to everyone equally, not everyone is benefiting from it equally in practice.

Its for these types of reasons, I really do think that the quality of the education in the higher scoring schools really is better. Do I worry much about one school that scores a few points less than another school on the API? No, but if the different in test scores was 100 points, I would find that meaningful.