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.
The percentages of students proficient and advanced in English language arts have improved steadily over the past decade. Source: California Department of Education (click to enlarge).
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