California Data
Every public school, district and county in California, charted year by year from the state's own test results.
Look at a few charts and you'll see the same thing: very little change. Each chart shows what the school system "wants", the results it is built to produce, plus the effects of circumstances from outside the school, like COVID and family income.
As long as the school system stays the same, there's no reason to expect results to rise above the upper limit, the top edge of the shaded band.
Once a school uses the Lead Out Method, that is what we expect to see: results climbing above the upper limit. It's the sign that the system now "wants" something different. What you want.
Each dot is one year. It shows how far the typical English learner's score was from Level 4, "Well Developed", the top level of the state's English language proficiency test (the ELPAC). Zero means right on it. Above zero is above it; below zero is below.
Every school's results bounce around a little from year to year. A different group of students, a flu season, a new teacher: small things push the number up or down. That bounce is normal, and it doesn't mean anything has really changed.
The shaded band marks how far the bounce normally goes. We work it out from the school's own history: how much its result typically moves from one year to the next.
The small numbers under each year are how many students took the test. In a small school a few students make a big difference, so its dots bounce further and its band is wider.
- A dot inside the band is ordinary bounce. The school is doing what it has always done.
- A dot outside the band is a real signal. Something changed, for better or worse, and it's worth asking what.
The little house in each year shows the share of students eligible for free or reduced-price school meals, a rough measure of family income. It sits on the same scale as the results: 0% at the top of the chart, 100% at the bottom. The fewer families with low incomes, the higher the house. Income moves results too, and it comes from outside the school.
Choose a subject and a county
This chart follows students who are still learning English. Each dot shows how close the typical English learner was to fluent that year, on the state's English test for English learners.
More about this chart
Who is in it
When a student starts school in California and their family speaks another language at home, the student takes an English screening test. Students who aren't yet fluent are English learners. Every spring, every English learner, kindergarten through grade 12, takes the English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (the ELPAC) until they are fluent. Students who are already fluent in English are never on this chart.
What it measures
English itself: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Not math, not science. The test sorts students into four levels:
- Level 1: Minimally Developed
- Level 2: Somewhat Developed
- Level 3: Moderately Developed
- Level 4: Well Developed, close to fluent
What a dot means
How far the typical English learner's score was from the Level 4 mark that year. Zero means right at Level 4; below zero means short of it. A dot at −80 means the school's English learners averaged 80 points below Level 4.
The catch
This group keeps changing. When an English learner becomes fluent (reaching Level 4 is a big part of that), they are reclassified as fluent and stop taking the test. Each year the strongest students leave and new beginners arrive. So a school doing a great job can still look flat, because its successes keep leaving the chart.
Two smaller things
- The small numbers under each year count English learners only, not the whole school.
- The houses show the free or reduced-price meal share for the whole school. The state doesn't publish it for English learners separately.
What a change would look like
Dots climbing above the upper limit would mean English learners are reaching fluency faster than the current system "wants". Because the students who succeed keep leaving the group, a rise here understates the improvement behind it, which makes this one of the hardest charts to move.
- Alameda
- Amador
- Butte
- Calaveras
- Colusa
- Contra Costa
- Del Norte
- El Dorado
- Fresno
- Glenn
- Humboldt
- Imperial
- Inyo
- Kern
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- Lake
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- Los Angeles
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- Stanislaus
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- Tulare
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- Yolo
- Yuba