The five Rocketship Education schools in San Jose, which serve largely low-income Latino English Language Learners, have a better way. Rocketship uses frequent assessments to track student progress and set academic goals for the coming term. Within days of students taking an assessment, Rocketship’s school leaders and data analysts have real data on each student, whole classes and grade levels.
As trends emerge, the school can address shortcomings in student progress. As a result, Rocketship is one of the highest performing schools in the state — scoring an impressive 855 on the API.
Dozens of other public and charter schools across California are delivering similar results, especially for historically underperforming populations. KIPP Empower, a K-3 charter school in South Los Angeles, and Oakland Unified’s Madison Middle School have adopted a blended learning model like Rocketship. Early results from frequent nationally-normed and internal benchmarks are promising.
The delay in delivering CST scores to schools means that no matter how accurate it may be, the data is neither accessible nor actionable. California’s parents, teachers and school leaders should have the tools to improve student performance in an accessible and timely format. Sacramento must deliver the student data quickly and provide teachers and parents the tools to act on the results.
Assessments can go from testing to action in four days. It should not take California four months to do the same.
Kennedy is a fellow at the Lexington Institute, a nonpartisan public policy think tank.