Topical Reports

On this website you will find data and analysis on elementary and secondary students; student outcomes; teachers and staff; and districts and schools. Each section begins with a table of contents.

In general, our research reveals three broad themes about the Five County Region's elementary and secondary education system. First, the number of students attending the region's schools has been growing rapidly for more than a decade. Second, this growth, combined with the public demand for school improvement, has created substantial quality challenges for the system. Third, school system responses to these quality challenges have been uneven, and have at times increased inequities. The system faces equity challenges perhaps even more daunting than its quality challenges.

In Students we present data on enrollment in both public and private schools. We have found steady and substantial growth in enrollments in recent years, concentrated almost exclusively in the public schools. There are several patterns in this growth:

• Both number and proportion of Latino students has grown dramatically throughout, in urban, suburban and rural areas.
• While the number of poor students has grown throughout the region, the proportion of students who are poor has leveled off..
• Finally, while LAUSD and the Long Beach Unified School District enroll more than a 1/4 of the students in the region, most of the rest of the region's students are in districts of 10,000 to 25,000 students.

In Student Outcomes we present data on several different performance indicators. One is the Academic Performance Index (API), a school-level score compiled primarily from standardized tests mandated by California. Second, we report and analyze dropout rates, though the data should be treated with some caution because of the difficulty of reliably tracking students as they move among schools and districts. Third, we report the proportion of school and district graduates who have completed courses necessary to qualify for admission to the University of California and California State University systems.

While API scores have generally improved throughout the region during the six years since this program was initiated, there nevertheless remain troubling patterns. Certain schools tend to consistently report lower scores:

• Schools with higher proportions of Latino and African American students.
• Schools with higher proportions of poor students.
• Schools with higher proportions of English Language Learners.
• Schools with year-round calendars.
• Schools with high proportions of non-credentialed teachers.

In Teachers and Staff we begin by reporting on the numbers and demographics of teachers and non-teaching staff in the region. We then present data and analysis of several indicators of teacher quality: educational preparation, credentials, and experience.

• The number of students per full-time nurse and full-time counselor is growing.
• More teachers are fully credentialed.
• The majority of teachers have between 5-9 average years of experience or 20+ average years of experience; not many teachers have between 9 and 19 years of experience.

In Districts and Schools we begin by describing the growing size of both districts and schools across the region. We then survey the changing demographics of districts and schools, noting that despite common perceptions, districts on the periphery of the region are often demographically quite similar to those in the core urban areas. For example, throughout the region a large proportion of students attend schools with high minority enrollment. Poverty is also common in districts and schools throughout the region.

Some of our most striking findings in this section concern year-round schools, which are often created when districts need to pack more students into already overcrowded facilities. Year-round schools divide their student bodies into "tracks," which then take alternating vacations to maximize enrollment in the school. This contrasts with a "traditional" school calendar, which runs from September through June and offers all students a common schedule. We noted earlier that year-round schools tend to have lower API scores. The data presented here also show that year-round schools (compared to traditional calendar schools):

• Tend to have substantially higher minority enrollments.
• Tend to have substantially higher proportions of poor students.
• Tend to have substantially higher proportions of students designated English Language Learners.