API Scores: Los Altos School District Tops Again

Los Altos Elementary School District and Saratoga Union Elementary School District came out on top in the closely watched Base Academic Performance Index results released Thursday, California Department of Education.

Individually, the top three performing schools in the state—Cupertino Union School  District’s Murdock-Portal and Faria, and Santa Clara Unified’s Milligan School—are from Santa Clara County, for the second year in a row, the county’s Office of Education trumpeted.

Bullis Charter School, Covington Elementary and Oak School posted 984 and 983 and 983 respectively, for the highest scores of Los Altos and Los Altos Hills-serving schools. because its schools are tightly banded, Superintendent Jeff Baier said last summer.

The newly released rankings are based on the Academic Performance Index (API) scores , which in turn are based on student performance on standardized tests given in 2011.

The API is a tool that the state uses in order to rate a school's performance on scale of 200 to 1,000. California's benchmark (expected average) is 800.

The county office said the results also show a trend of higher performance among a broad range of schools in the county, for tests that were taken by students last spring. About 62 percent of county schools met or exceeded the statewide performance target of 800 for the 2011 Base API. That compares with 45 percent statewide.

Almost half of county schools are in the top three deciles (compared to 29 percent statewide. Schools showed a trend of improvement in the county over last year’s results.

“What a fantastic showing by our schools and students,” said Dr. Charles Weis, Santa Clara County Superintendent of Schools.

California uses the API as a measure of student academic progress, and is part of the Public Schools Accountability Act passed by the state Legislature in 1999. The measure includes student assessments in mathematics, English, science and social studies. The API is calculated by converting a student’s performance across multiple areas into points on the API scale. The points are then averaged across all students and all tests, resulting in the API.

The state releases the base API results in the late spring and then the growth API results in the late summer.

Below are some selected tables released by the Santa Clara County  Office of Education.  Patch will provide more tables detailing the performance of all all Los Altos schools later Thursday:

Table 3:  2011 Base API, Schools in SCC Achieving the Highest Base API Scores 

CA Rank*

School

District

2011 Base API

T 1

Murdock-Portal Elementary

Cupertino Union

998

T 1

William Faria Elementary

Cupertino Union

998

3

Millikin Elementary

Santa Clara Unified

997

5

Herbert Hoover Elementary

Palo Alto Unified

995

11

Nelson S. Dilworth Elementary

Cupertino Union

991

T 15

Garden Gate Elementary

Cupertino Union

988

T 19

Bullis Charter

Santa Clara County Office of Ed.

984

T 19

Argonaut Elementary

Saratoga Union Elementary

984

T 24

Sam H. Lawson Middle

Cupertino Union

983

T 24

John F. Kennedy Middle

Cupertino Union

983

T 24

L. P. Collins Elementary

Cupertino Union

983

T 24

Covington Elementary

Los Altos Elementary

983

T 24

Oak Avenue Elementary

Los Altos Elementary

983

T 29

Tom Matsumoto Elementary

Evergreen Elementary

982

T 31

Joaquin Miller Middle

Cupertino Union

981

T 31

Abraham Lincoln Elementary

Cupertino Union

981

* T indicates a tie.

2011 Base API, Three Highest-Ranked Districts in SCC      

SCC Rank*

District

2011 Base API

CA Rank*

T 1

Los Altos Elementary

969

T 1

T 1

Saratoga Union Elementary

969

T 1

3

Lakeside Joint

968

T 4

* T indicates a tie.