Student performance on California’s achievement tests, known as the STAR program, continues to improve — in almost every subject at almost every grade level by every ethnicity — despite recent cutbacks to education funding, according to 2012 STAR test results released by the California Department of Education today.
But a substantial achievement gap persists between low-income and higher-income students, and between African American and Latino students and their white and Asian peers.
Overall, 57 percent of the 4.7 million students tested proficient or advanced in English and 51 percent scored at least proficient in math — a substantial improvement since 2003, when the tests were first based on state standards and included in a school’s Academic Performance