The California Department of Education yesterday released results for the 2010 California Standards Tests (CSTs). In this exclusive report, OC180NEWS provides a prospective on the individual schools in the Los Alamitos Unified School District.

These tests were taken last spring by students in grades 2 through 11 and are standards-based tests measuring student achievement in English Language arts, mathematics, science, and history-social science. Under California’s Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Program, California students attain one of five levels of performance on the CSTs for each subject tested - Advanced, Proficient, Basic, Below Basic, and Far Below Basic. The State Board of Education has established the Proficient level as the desired achievement goal for all students.

In order to keep the massive amount of data provided by the STAR program manageable, our analysis will combine scores for Proficient and Advanced. Further, we will only consider totals by school, rather than by grade.

Los Alamitos High School
Los Al students had their highest level of success on the English Language Arts test where 79.9% scored Proficient or Advanced. When the results for all grades are combined, Los Al scores exceed Orange County totals in every test category. This certainly does not mean that Los Al beat the County numbers in every test and every grade. See our related article below.

The lowest test results at Los Al were in math, where only 60.2% of the students hit the Proficient/Advanced benchmark. Districtwide 73.2% of the students were Proficient or Advanced in math. Countywide for math in all grades, the score was 57.2%. Math, where the Los Al score was the same as last year, also was the only test area at Los Al which did not improve from 2009. While the combined Los Al math score was better than the county total, the county numbers improved by 2.5 percentage points. Unless Los Al begins to improve their math results, the county numbers could be close to catching up with Los Al within one year.

McAuliffe Middle School
With 88.2% scoring in the top groupings, the science students at McAuliffe were the high scorers on that campus. Although this score is very high, it fell from the 91.9% achieved in 2009. The lowest scores were in math (75.4%) which also was lower than the 76.2% from 2009. The history scores, at 83.2%, improved the most (up 4.7 points) at McAuliffe. English Language Arts, at 86.5% was nearly the same as last year.

Oak Middle School
With the exception of history, the scores at Oak are lower than McAuliffe, but they are improving faster. For English Language Arts, Oak students scored 81.7%, verses 86.5% at McAuliffe. But the McAuliffe score did not change significantly, while at Oak, the score improved by 4.4 points.

The math students at Oak, with only 65.8% hitting the benchmark, were the most behind McAuliffe, where 75.4% hit the goal. But McAuliffe’s math scores actually fell a little, while at Oak, the math score improved by 3.5 points.

It was the same situation for science – Oak at 83% was lower than McAuliffe at 88%, but again, McAuliffe’s score fell by 3.7 points, while scores improved at Oak by 1.8 points. The best performance at Oak was in history. In this test, Oak, at 85.9%, is ahead of McAuliffe, but they are gaining ground. McAuliffe improved by 4.7 points, while Oak increased by only 2.4 points.

Hopkinson Elementary School
All of the scores at Hopkinson have been high and they stayed that way for 2010. For English Language Arts, the score was 86.2%, down 1.8 points from 2009. In math, 91.8% of the students were Proficient or Advanced, up 0.7 points from last year. 88.8% of the science students hit the target, down slightly from last year.

Lee Elementary School
The Lee students came roaring into the 90% club with a 10.5 point improvement in their math score. They hit 92.0%, up from 81.5% in 2009. But, math wasn’t the only subject where the Lee students showed strong improvement – they pushed up their English Language Arts score by 6.1 points to 85.5% from the 79.4% they scored in 2009. These students were hitting the books for science as well. These scores improved 2.6 points, to 86.7%.

Los Alamitos Elementary School
Speaking of hitting the books, all scores at LAE showed strong improvement in 2010. English Language Arts hit 78.1%, up 8.1 points from 2009. Math came in at 81.3%, up by 12.1 points and science 80.3%, also up by 8.1 points.

McGaugh Elementary School
The McGaugh students reversed the declines suffered last year, and for two of the three tests, the results surpassed the 2008 levels. Last year, when compared to 2008, results in all three tests fell. But, the strong gains in 2010 put the English Language Arts and the Science scores higher than two years ago. English gained 4.2 points to 80.5%, and science rocketed up by 14.7 points to 83.7%. While math went up by 4.5 points to 82.9%, it remains below the 84.3% achieved in 2008.

Rossmoor Elementary School
The high score at Rossmoor was in English Language Arts, at 85.0%, up just under one point, closely followed by math, at 84.1%. But, the math score was 3.4 points lower than 2009. The science score came in at 73.8%, up 2 points from last year.

Weaver Elementary School
Weaver joined the 90% club in 2007 when their English Language Arts hit 91.7%. The next year, Weaver’s math score joined English in the top tier. Last year, 2009, science made it complete with a score of 91.0%.

Even though there were some decreases this year, for the second year in a row, all three of Weaver’s test scores were above 90%. English, at 92.5%, fell by 2.3 points. Math also fell, hitting 94.4, a drop of 2.4 points. The science score continued to improve, hitting 94.7%, up 3.7 points from last year.

The scores reported in this article are combined for all grade levels at each school. This approach runs the risk of concealing some performance outliers among the grades at a particular school. For example, some of the math scores at Los Alamitos High School are very far below the math total. Thus, while the overall math scores at a school might present one picture, more detailed review of grade level results could add insight into interpreting the results. See our related article below.