Analyzing school rankings

What do you make of the latest Academic Performance Index, or API, scores for Newport-Mesa, which were released last week?

First, I want to congratulate the teachers. I know many teachers who work on weekends and after school preparing their lessons and doing endless paperwork because of their commitment to see their students improve.

The district’s API score of 760 falls short of the state’s goal of 800. As usual, the Newport Beach schools fare very well in the high 800s and 900s; most Costa Mesa schools are in the 700s, with a few in the low 800s, but the Westside schools are stuck in the 600s. It’s interesting to note that the school board recently turned down the application for the Classical Academy, an innovative charter school, which scored 834 on the API.

The community, especially Westside and Mesa Verde area taxpayers, expect improvement so students don’t have to flee to private schools or other schools in the district to get a better education. But despite teachers’ best efforts, the current system is not geared for great gains by the persistently low performing schools.

Several factors slow progress. It is a fact that most of the children in the low performing schools are the children of immigrants, legal or illegal, who must be taught to read, write and speak English before they learn other subjects.

Many of the parents are not interested in learning English or acclimating to the American culture so that they might help their children. Many stay away from the schools for fear of being deported. These parents often move frequently from school to school. These facts alone put a tremendous burden on the child, the teacher and the system.

But change is on the way, and I hope we will see test scores go up in the future as Washington, D.C., legislators make decisions about controlling illegal immigration. Hopefully new laws and a fence at the border will send a powerful message that no longer will America welcome anyone entering the U.S. illegally. At the local level, we can expect there will be fewer non-English speaking students entering our schools.

Teachers will be able to concentrate on teaching more stabilized classes of students and will be able to see their hard work pay off in better scores.