Dear JJSE Community,

In a recent San Francisco Chronicle article about state test scores, reporter Jill Tucker said that JJSE’s API score of 542 was a “concern.” Her comment seemed strange to me, since not a single JJSE student, parent, or staff member had mentioned the API to me. I started to wonder: Is it a concern to the JJSE community?

Some of you may be asking, what exactly is the API? When I first heard these initials, I thought someone was talking about my friends in the Asian Pacific Islander community. But it turns out that in education-policy-speak, “API” stands for Academic Performance Index, and it is one of the main ways that the state of California measures whether public schools are successful.

Believe it or not, the formula for the API changes every year. According to the California Department of Education, here is the current calculation, which results in an API score of between 200 and 1000:

1. Convert each test result into a score on the API scale using statewide performance level weighting factors: Advanced (or CAHSEE pass) = 1000 points; Proficient = 875 points; Basic = 700 points; Below Basic = 500 points; Far Below Basic (or CAHSEE not pass) = 200 points

2. Calculate a weighted average of the scores using statewide test weights. The high school weights are: English 0.30; Math 0.20; Science 0.22; Life Science (10^th grade) 0.10; Social Science 0.23; CAHSEE English 0.30; CAHSEE Math 0.30; No Math test taken (score=200) 0.10; No Science test taken (score=200) 0.05.

3. Add in the Scale Calibration Factor (SCF) of 16.94.

4. Sum the weighted average of the scores and the SCF to produce the API.

The complexity of this formula may give the impression that it is measuring something with a great deal of accuracy. But what it really does is take a variety of standardized test results and weight them arbitrarily to produce a single number, which is not a measurement of anything in particular.

When I ask parents at JJSE what they want for their kids’ education, most of them say they want them to grow as human beings first, and then as students. They want to make sure their children finish high school, walk on stage, and have the opportunity to go on to college if they choose. The API does not measure any of these things.

And these things parents want are the places where JJSE students excel. In the class of 2010, for example, JJSE had the second-highest college-eligibility rate in the city, after Lowell High School, and our graduates earned over $1 million in scholarships. To my knowledge, the San Francisco Chronicle has never published an article about how well different high schools prepare students for college.

What inspires JJSE students to attend college? Listen in on this excerpt from an informal panel of seniors talking to their younger peers:

It's clear that these students are not motivated by a desire to improve their test scores. It’s also clear that JJSE students need more practice at standardized tests--but I’m not convinced the API measures much of anything. What do you think? Is the school’s low API score a concern to you? Please let me know what you think!

Sincerely,
Matt Alexander, Co-Director