Dear IUSD Community, I am proud to announce that Irvine Unified School District’s state standardized assessment scores have outperformed both state and county score averages, with IUSD ranking the highest of all Orange County school districts. Please click here to view the official rankings for Orange County school districts. Last spring, IUSD students in grades three thru eight and grade 11 participated in the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP), which provides information on each student’s progress on the new standards. While the scores are just one of many measures of student performance, they help to enhance our understanding of each student’s needs and inform our educational efforts. Irvine Unified’s Continuous Improvement Efforts (CIE) were designed and adopted well before the new state standards. We believe our exemplary score results reflect the CIE alignment with the same critical thinking, creativity, communication, and other learning outcomes in the new state standards. These student capacities have always been an integral part of IUSD’s educational mission and vision. We recognize that there will continue to be opportunities for reflection and growth but these results are a testament to our collective efforts and the special partnership between our hardworking students, dedicated families, and talented staff. California is in the process of distributing individual student score reports and released this statewide aggregate data on Wednesday, September 9, 2015. IUSD anticipates that we will receive and then mail home individual student score reports between late September and early October. In the interim, please keep the following in mind about these new assessments. New Scores Cannot be Compared to Old Scores The Smarter Balanced Assessments are aligned with the new state standards and are scored in a completely new way. Therefore, scores from these new assessments cannot be compared to older state testing scores. Click here for a sample score report. The New Assessments Provide a Baseline for Future Progress The new assessment results will provide a baseline to track student progress over time. As students and schools become more familiar and proficient with these new standards, we expect the scores to continue to increase. Scores are One of Many Measures Assessment scores should be recognized as only one measure when evaluating student learning; they provide some but not all information about a student’s knowledge and skills. Results from tests should be reviewed in combination with other measures, such as in-class assignments, classroom tests, teacher conferences and other factors. For more information about your child’s academic progress, please stay in close contact with your child’s teacher(s) and school. How Test Scores are Used IUSD will use these baseline scores to better understanding each student’s learning and help the District continue to improve upon the high-quality instruction we provide. The scores will not be used to determine student advancement to the next grade level or as the sole piece of information when making academic decisions about students. For additional information, please visit the following resources. iusd.org/statewide-testing iusd.org/common-core cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/ca/ On behalf of our Board of Education and IUSD staff, we deeply appreciate your engagement, partnership and support. Our combined collaborative efforts continue to enable IUSD to deliver on our promise to provide the highest quality educational experience we can envision. Thank you. Sincerely,
