Dos Pueblos High School held the highest test scores in California’s Smarter Balanced assessment as students were tested in subjects such as English Language Arts (ELA), Math, and Science. Eleventh graders at DP scored 72 percent in ELA and 46 percent in math, in which they met or exceeded standards. The Smarter Balanced assessment is an online performance task designed to track student development and growth in several subjects.
DP’s Principal, Bill Woodard, credits the students, teachers, and faculty members who contributed to these outcomes.
“Our english and our math and our science teachers did the heaviest lifting because they prepared the students,” Woodard said. “Like our career technical education classes are getting kids to think critically and all those like higher level thinking skills we do in every class around campus.”
DP’s student body encompasses many different diverse subgroups, categorized by ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Woodard shares the success that many of these subgroups achieved with test scores.
“Our socioeconomically disadvantaged population is 47 percent … and their scores went up …seven percent,” Woodard said. “Hispanic Latino students’ scores went up eight percent so we saw some good growth in other parts of the campus too.’’
Woodard notes his reaction to DP receiving the highest test scores across Santa Barbara Unified School District. With San Marcos High School scoring 55.79 percent in ELA and 31.90 percent in math and Santa Barbara High School scoring 42.80 percent in English and 23.71 percent in math.
“We were excited about seeing that we were the highest performing in the whole county with all the Santa Barbara High Schools,” Woodard said.
Although DP had improvements in test scores from previous years, Woodard explains that there is room for improvement.
“We want to continue to get better,” Woodard said. “We know we still have gaps between certain populations. Our white and Asian students, not only at this school, but throughout California perform better than our Hispanic and African American students. And we want to close that gap. We want to keep those numbers going in the right direction.”
Woodard believes that the outcome of these high test scores will benefit the community as a whole.
“We want to prepare students well, we want to do the best we can because the better we do as a school, that builds into our reputation,” Woodard said. “I want to thank the students. I mean, it’s really easy to be cynical about these tests … juniors are caring more about their AP tests and their IB exams, [and] then there’s the Smarter Balanced, so I just appreciate that. Almost everybody tried their best and I’m hoping this year juniors do the same.”
