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Test scores

South High · Bakersfield, CA
See how it ranks: all California schools by score · Kern County schools by score

CAASPP Smarter Balanced, SY 2023-24

All grades, all students. % met or exceeded standard.
English Language Arts
60.6%
State avg 47.1%
District avg 49.6%
County avg 38.0%
+41.6pp since 2014-15
Math
14.4%
State avg 35.6%
District avg 16.6%
County avg 23.0%
-0.6pp since 2014-15

What this means: On the CAASPP Smarter Balanced, California's statewide test, about 61 of every 100 students at this school read and write at grade level and about 14 of 100 do math at grade level. Across all California schools, those numbers are about 47 and 36. Reading and writing scores are up about 42 points since 2014, while math scores have held steady.

BeatsExpectations

Demographically-adjusted score · methodology
Tier
OUTPERFORMING
Top 10% of CA schools after controlling for student poverty
Actual proficiency
37.5%
composite math + reading, all grades
Predicted
21.8%
based on CA schools with similar FRL share
Beats by
+15.7pp
above demographic expectation

What this means: About 37% of students here test proficient in math and reading, well above the roughly 22% typical for California schools with a similar share of low-income students. BeatsExpectations ranks schools against others at the same poverty level, not by raw scores, so a school can post high scores and still fall short of its prediction, or post lower scores and still beat it. This school clears its prediction by about 16 points, placing it in California's top 10%.

BeatsExpectations runs a per-state regression of proficiency on free/reduced-lunch share, then scores each school by residual. How this is calculated →

By grade, SY 2023-24

School score vs state average per tested grade.
GradeEnglish Language ArtsMath
SchoolStaten testedSchoolStaten tested
Grade 1160.6%55.8%41814.4%28.0%416

9-year history

All grades, all students. South   California avg

English Language Arts

44192014-1548592015-1649572016-1750482017-1851412018-1949882020-2147432021-2247572022-2347612023-24
YearSchoolDistrictCountyState
SY 2023-2460.6%49.6%38.0%47.1%
SY 2022-2357.3%50.7%37.8%46.7%
SY 2021-2242.9%46.8%37.4%47.1%
SY 2020-2187.5%89.8%37.4%49.0%
SY 2018-1940.8%51.1%43.7%51.1%
SY 2017-1847.7%48.9%42.0%49.9%
SY 2016-1757.0%51.4%40.3%48.6%
SY 2015-1659.0%51.4%38.2%48.1%
SY 2014-1519.0%48.4%32.9%44.0%

Math

34152014-1537242015-1638252016-1739212017-1840192018-1933112021-2235172022-2336142023-24
YearSchoolDistrictCountyState
SY 2023-2414.4%16.6%23.0%35.6%
SY 2022-2316.5%16.9%22.3%34.6%
SY 2021-2210.9%16.1%20.7%33.4%
SY 2020-21N/A18.2%19.0%33.7%
SY 2018-1918.9%21.0%29.2%39.8%
SY 2017-1821.4%21.4%27.8%38.7%
SY 2016-1724.8%21.4%26.8%37.6%
SY 2015-1624.0%23.0%25.4%36.7%
SY 2014-1515.0%23.3%22.4%33.6%

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How to read these scores

What is CAASPP Smarter Balanced?
CAASPP (the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress) is California's annual statewide test. Public-school students in grades 3 through 8 and grade 11 take the Smarter Balanced Summative Assessments in English Language Arts and Math each spring.
What does "% met or exceeded standard" mean?
It is the percentage of students at the school whose scores were rated "Standard Met" or "Standard Exceeded" on the test. Those are the top two of four performance levels, and they signal the student is performing at grade level or above. A higher number is better.
What does 60.6% mean for English Language Arts at South High?
It means about 60.6 percent of students tested at South High performed at grade level or above on the CAASPP Smarter Balanced English Language Arts test in 2023-24. The statewide average for California that year was 47.1%. The other students fell into the lower performance levels.
How is the state average calculated?
It is a weighted average, not a simple average of each school's number. We multiply each public school's score by how many of its students tested, add those together for all schools in California, and divide by the total students tested that year. This way a big school with 1,500 students counts more than a small school with 50 students, which is the right way to ask "how did the typical student do this year?". District and county averages on this page use the same method, just scoped to that district or county.
Where does this data come from?
California Department of Education, CAASPP Smarter Balanced Summative Assessment. School-level "All Students" subgroup. Scores suppressed for groups under 11 students.
How often is it updated?
CAASPP Smarter Balanced is administered once a year (spring). Results are released by the state in the summer or early fall. We refresh this page after each annual release.

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