In the first glimpse of California’s K-12 schools’ year-over-year progress since the pandemic,  graduation rates hit some of their highest levels ever, absenteeism dropped significantly, and hundreds of districts showed academic improvements.

But despite a few bright spots, most of the 13 measurements that California uses to gauge student achievement remained flat in the , which the California Department of Education released on Dec. 15.

Returning to the color-coded system the state used prior to the pandemic, the new dashboard graded many categories as “yellow,” or mid-way between high and low. In assigning one of five colors, the state combines data about schools’ current performance and progress from previous years, which it says creates a more nuanced picture of achievement. Districts that score red — the lowest grade — for more than one category qualify for extra assistance to make improvements. 

During the pandemic, the state didn’t update the dashboard for two years, and then last year didn’t use the color-coding system because there was no previous data to compare it to. This is the first year since 2019 that the dashboard contains full information about test scores and other metrics.

First released in 2018, the dashboard is meant to give the public a fuller view of school performance, beyond just test scores. The dashboard looks at detailed data such as suspension rates, progress of English learners and career readiness, broken down by race and ethnicity and whether students are low-income, in foster care, are homeless or have disabilities.

“In no way, shape or form is yellow a good thing,” said Kimberly Mundhenk, education research and evaluation administrator for the Department of Education. “But it could mean that there’s improvements. 
 Not all yellows are created equal.”

The number of students who graduated within five years climbed to 88.7%, the highest rate since the state started tracking that data in 2018. More than half of those students qualified for California’s public universities, also the highest rate in years. 

Chronic absenteeism, which hit record levels during the pandemic, dropped to 24.3%, down more than 5 percentage points from last year but still more than double the pre-pandemic level.

“I’m glad to see that we’re starting to turn things around, and that districts that had intentional strategies saw big improvements,” said Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, which researches the topic. “But we still have a significant challenge before us.”

Los Angeles Unified and Monterey County both doubled down on attendance efforts last year, she said, by examining data, working directly with families to address the barriers to attendance, investing in after-school and summer programs and taking other steps to get students back in the classroom after the height of the pandemic. A comprehensive, data-focused strategy clearly works, Chang said, and the state should encourage all districts to adopt such an approach. 

Heather Hough, executive director of Policy Analysis for California Education, said that the state needs to take dramatic steps to jolt schools toward better results. She and her PACE colleagues showing that collaboration among teachers, data analysis and extra help for struggling students can have “measurable impacts on student achievement.”

“There isn’t a simple solution, because the problem is that our schools (currently) aren’t organized in a way that supports and empowers educators to make sure every student learns,” she said. “The dashboard release will bring new attention to the issue, and will raise again questions about what, exactly, we need to do.”

The number of school districts that qualified for what the state calls “differentiated assistance” — extra help based on poor achievement in at least two categories — fell dramatically, from 617 last year to 466 in 2023, primarily because of improvements in attendance, according to the state.

were released in October and incorporated into the new dashboard. Mostly unchanged from last year, the dashboard shows English language arts and math both in “orange,” or below average. In English language arts, students scored an average of 13.6 points below the state benchmark on a 200-point scale, and 49.1 points below the standard in math.

Education officials said they were gratified about the dashboard data. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said the improvements show that California’s recent investments in K-12 education are beginning to pay off. Since the onset of the pandemic, the state and federal governments have spent billions on tutoring, after-school programs and mental health programs to help students recover from school closures.

“This is encouraging news — and our work is not complete,” Thurmond said. “We need to continue providing students with the tools they need to excel, especially now that we are successfully reengaging our students and families, so we can close gaps in achievement in the same way that we have begun to close the equity gaps in attendance and absenteeism.” 

Los Angeles Unified was especially proud of its adjusted 4-year graduation rate, which jumped almost five percentage points to 84%. In addition, a record number of graduates — 53% — met the admission requirements for University of California and California State University. 

“The work we are doing to transform Los Angeles Unified into the premier urban district in the nation is being demonstrated in the remarkable stories of our students overcoming adversity, dedicating themselves to their school work and graduating ready to change the world,” Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said. “Our students and families have confronted remarkable challenges since the pandemic, but this is the latest signpost validating the progress we are making as a district.”

San Francisco Unified touted the drop in its chronic absenteeism rate, from 29% to 26%, among almost all student groups. The district had been prioritizing attendance with incentives like schoolwide dance breaks, parent notifications and services to help families get their children to school regularly.

“Attendance is directly tied to student outcomes. If a child doesn’t come to school, they’re not learning,” Superintendent Matt Wayne said. “We are pleased to have made progress last year in reducing chronic absenteeism, and we know that more work is needed to continue supporting students in coming to school every day.”

Among English learners, the dashboard assigned “yellow” statewide, based on 48.7% of students advancing in their language skills. But Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together, an English learner advocacy group, said the state should have higher standards for its students.

“We’re happy the state has returned to the color-coded indicators, but we’re very concerned that 48.7% is considered yellow,” Hernandez said. “We’d like to see more aspirational goals, like 80%. 
 We know that there’s a persistent achievement gap for English learners, but California is giving itself a yellow as if there’s no sense of urgency.”

Students who don’t become proficient in English are more likely to struggle academically and miss out on opportunities to succeed in college and career, she said. 

“This is important,” she said. “I think we need to have higher expectations.”

The online tool, its creators say, will democratize school performance data at an important time, as schools nationwide struggle to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Scheduled to go live today, the new website sports a simple interface that allows users to query it conversationally, as they would a search engine or AI chatbot, to plumb math and English language arts data in grades 3-8. At the moment, there are no firm plans to add high school-level data.

If, for instance, a superintendent is curious about math scores for kids learning English in her state, she can : “Show me math scores over time for English learners and non-English learners in Minnesota.” Want to know the 10 school districts in Mississippi with the highest ELA scores in 2023? .

Similarly, parents moving to a new town or neighborhood can ask about data for individual schools in most cases.

The project, dubbed , is a partnership between Brown University and , the company that built the site’s AI functionality. 

The tool takes a cue from data dashboards, such as the federal government’s , which collect statewide assessment information. This one goes further, allowing more up-to-date analyses of state, district and even school-level data, with protections that shield individual students’ scores in small districts and schools. 

Within state, local and school-level data, users can also break down results by race, ethnicity, economic level and other indicators.

The AI aspect allows users to query the database in plain language, said Emily Oster, a well-known economist who often writes on parenting. Oster led the tool’s development and said its potential customer base is broad, from parents and school board members to state policymakers and journalists.

“You can imagine people actually wanting to see in a more granular way, or be able to explore in a more granular way: ‘How are different schools in this district doing’ or ‘How is my district doing relative to another district?’ This will make that much easier.”

Oster said the tool is so easy to use that a school board member sitting in a board meeting could pull out her phone and in a few seconds produce a chart showing school-by-school test results districtwide. 

Policymakers could also benefit from the tool, she said, since they can’t always access state assessment data without cumbersome requests to state education officials. “And that takes time. If you want to have access to get an insight quickly, this is going to make it easier.”

What’s perhaps most useful, Oster said, is the ability to look inside individual states, down to the district or school level, to figure out which schools and populations are doing better than others. “I think that’s actually pretty powerful in terms of where the policy is made.”

Reliance on ‘plain language’

Project Manager Clare Halloran said Zelma grew out of Brown researchers’ own frustration in trying to compare COVID recovery data across states. “It was usually hard to find out where the information was, what was missing,” she said.

Even states with public-facing data portals and dashboards don’t make the job easy, she said, as many are “a little bit clunky.” They rely on dropdown menus that can only offer one indicator at a time. With Zelma, she said, “You can really just kind of say in plain language what you’re looking for,” even if it involves several variables. 

“I think it will make a lot of data just a lot more accessible to a lot more people,” she said. “When the states release their data, we get the headline. But it’s hard for the average person to explore it a little bit more.”

All queries are public but the authors aren’t identified. The site resembles a Twitter-like feed, with the most recent queries at the top so users can see what others want to learn about.

It also offers warnings — dubbed “notable events” — that caution users not to read too much into proficiency levels in certain cases, such as in states and districts where new assessments are being administered, or where they see lower participation rates.

And while it can offer rudimentary comparisons between states, Oster said neither Zelma nor the assessments themselves are built for such comparisons. 

“There are things across states you might get out of this, for example how much recovery has there been” in one state vs. another, she said. “You can sort of squint a little and think about differences in trends. And I actually think there is some stuff we can learn from those kinds of trends. But in terms of levels, these data are just not well suited to a question of, ‘Is Mississippi outperforming Michigan?’ That’s why we’ve got the NAEP data.”

Actually, asking the tool to compare states will prompt a warning saying that states administer different assessments and that proficiency rates “are not comparable across states.” 

Even with a more user-friendly interface, though, the site is only as good as the data underlying it — and it’s uneven among states. Minnesota, for instance, offers test scores clear back to the late 1990s. But Rhode Island has no data before 2018.

And, of course, virtually no states returned test scores in 2020 and 2021, when the U.S. Department of Education granted blanket standardized testing waivers amid the pandemic.

Paul Peterson, who directs the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, said he welcomed the ability to more easily dig into states’ updated testing data.

“Any enhancement of transparency is a good thing,” he said.

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to Zelma and Âé¶čŸ«Æ·.