Hi Mesa Members,
I was asked to gather information about Los Altos School District’s (LASD’s) English Language Learner population. I have linked a pdf file containing information from the California Department of Education website about LASD’s English Language Learners.
http://www.mesacomunidad.org/LASD_English_learner_population.pdf If you find that I have missed some public data from the state’s site, please let me know. This was quickly done, so please forgive any omissions and give me the opportunity to make corrections.
It’s Not Easy to Count Numbers of English Learners Because the State Has a Variety of Categories and Tests What I found was that it is not easy to count the number of students with limited English because there are many different types of students who have very different types of needs, and the state lumps them together for one kind of count and then disaggregates the numbers for other types of counts.
For example, students who are proficient in English and redesignated out of English learner classification are still counted as English learners for a few years afterwards. The state asks the district to inflate the number of English learners in their count in case these students need extra services even after they are considered fluent.
This may explain why one of our Mesa members told me that there are only nine families served by the English Learner teacher at Almond and the district numbers are much higher.
CELDT Testing Outcomes Indicate High English Language Skills in LASDThe state requires school districts to give English learners a test called the CELDT test to determine the level of English language development. Students who are at the intermediate, early advanced and advanced are considered good English speakers, yet they are still considered English language learners.
English learners are “redesignated” when they do well on the CELDT test. (Doing well by state standards is high intermediate, early advanced or advanced). I do not know what LASD’s requirements or cut-offs are.
It also looks as if the state recommends that students can be below grade level proficient (high Basic) as English Learners and be redesignated. Obviously, given the high average API scores for English Learners and Hispanic students in Los Altos, it is likely that the majority are beyond high basic. However, when one sees averages, it is possible for one portion to be extremely low and another portion to be extremely high, so it is difficult to draw conclusions from the average APIs.
Some of the CELDT data is included in the following pages, but readers should link to the CELDT webpage and look at all of the data. (I did not include them all here.)
LASD’s English Learners and Hispanic Population Are High Performing By State Standards The Los Altos School District’s English learner population has an average API of 834 (included are 242 second through eighth graders—kindergarten and first grade are not included in API.)
The state designates an 800 API as high performing, so on average, English learners in Los Altos test as high or higher than English speaking White students in many schools in California. (For example, White students at Lynnhaven Elementary in the Campbell district have an average API of 821. White students at Blackford Elementary in Cambrian district average 750 API.)
LASD’s Hispanic population had an average API of 797 (119 second through eighth graders), very close to that magic 800 number indicating high performance.
Here’s some averate API statewide comparisons for grades 2-6 (not including grades 7-8). The API averages below are the averages for all students in California:
English Learners average 676.
White students who are not Hispanic average 837
Hispanic students average 690.
Low socioeconomic students average 686
Students with disabilities average 567
http://api.cde.ca.gov/AcntRpt2007/2006Base_StAPI.aspx
We know that LASD is one of the top performing, if not the top test scoring district in the state, but I thought you would want to see how much higher than the state average.
Here's the link to the English learner data
http://www.mesacomunidad.org/LASD_English_learner_population.pdfVicki Hobel Schultz
May 15, 2007
