By Noah Bell
Online Theme Editor
Mira Costa juniors reached the 95% participation threshold for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium testing that the state designs to assess both individual student and school rankings by Common Core standards, Costa Principal Dr. Ben Dale said in an email to staff members and juniors’ parents on Thursday.
The SBAC is the national standardized test that replaced the California Standards Test/Standardized Testing And Reporting assessment, Dale said. During the 2014-15 school year, 29% of juniors opted out of the SBAC testing. As a result, MBUSD lost $23,000 in funds from the Federal Department of Education that goes toward educational purposes, Manhattan Beach Unified School District Superintendant Dr. Michael Matthews said.
“It is critical to have one major assessment that lets students, parents and teachers know how our students are doing compared with similar schools,” Matthews said. “If we don’t have that, each school is too isolated and really has very little idea of the big picture in terms of our students’ progress.”
At the beginning of the testing week, the participation rate was approximately 88%, Dale said. However, once students who missed the SBAC made it up, it rose to 95%.
Costa will find out soon if it will receive the Title One funds, a federal program that helps to support and fund public schools, because it did receive exactly 95% of the junior class’ participation, the minimum percentage required to receive the funds.
“The opt outs just create more work than is necessary since we then have to chase people down to get the 95% participation rate,” Dale said. “Getting to that level prevents us from being unfairly labeled as Program Improvement, which is meant for low-performing schools.”
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