Dear OTA Families:
The California Standards Test (CST) results are out and your child’s scores should be arriving by mail this week. Since OTA does not have two years of test results we do not have growth data from the State tests; but we do have the breakdown on how many of last year’s students scored Advanced, Proficient, Basic, Below Basic, or Far Below Basic in Math & English/Language Arts.

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I’ve included two graphs below summarizing our scores in Math & English/Language Arts. In a separate post we’ll share the Results of our 2011-2012 Student Survey, which we take as seriously as the CST scores (Download a Parent Guide to the CST).

• CA Standards Test Results in English/Language Arts (85% of OTA students scored Advance or Proficient in English/Language Arts: 121/142 )

“School Quality Snapshot”: You can download the California Dept of Education’s  report card on our first year of operation here: OTA Accountability Report Card. Our first year API (Academic Performance Index) Score is 884.

These school-wide scores for our first year of operation are very good and the question arises, can OTA take any credit for these results? Yes, OTA teachers deserve credit for the high percentages of students who scored advanced or proficient in Math and English/Language Arts.

• We tested our students in the latest possible testing window; so students had almost an entire year within our classrooms and labs before they sat down to take the exam.
• If we had serious flaws in our academic programs or classroom instruction the test results would have revealed them.
• We started the year with 191 students and ended the year with 217. Most of our students spent the majority of the school year at OTA.

But the real measure of a good academic quality assurance system is whether it can answer these two questions:

1. How much growth did we get (as a school and grade-to-grade) given each student’s and class’s starting point? Since this is our first year we don’t have data to answer this question.
2. Where do we need to improve our instruction? Here the CST can help and we have identified three strands (Writing Conventions/Strategies; Ratios/ Proportions/ Percentages; and Measurement/Geometry) where we need to improve instruction in 2012-2013. These “needs-improvement” strands vary slightly from grade to grade; but we are committed to identifying them for each and working with teachers to push for even better results this year.

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Quick Facts About 2011 CST Testing:

• Only Students in grades 2-8 take the CST.
• 142 OTA students (96% of our eligible 2nd-8th graders) took the CST.
• Students in 5th and 8th are also tested in Science
• Students in 8th are also tested in History.