http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics...olumns-blogs/dan-walters/article72237827.html
april 16 2016 For years, California politicians and educators – who are sometimes the same – have talked about the “achievement gap” that separates poor and “English-learner” students from more advantaged classmates.
Three years ago, at the urging of Gov. Jerry Brown, the Legislature completely overhauled school finance. The state gave schools many billions of new dollars, eliminated restrictions on existing funds, and provided extra money to districts with large numbers of disadvantaged students to attack the achievement gap.
Simultaneously, the state is embracing Common Core academic standards. And the state already has administered tests based on the standards, results of which were released last year.
The overall achievement levels were, in fact, relatively low, as educators warned. But the Public Policy Institute of California, in a new analysis, found that they were particularly so for the roughly 3.5 million “high-need” students that LCFF is supposed to help.
But, as PPIC also noted, “at hundreds of schools, no fourth-grade ELs met the state ELA standard,” with the heaviest concentrations of underachievement found in the Inland Empire of Southern California, the San Joaquin Valley and Los Angeles Unified School District.
Overall, PPIC concluded, the achievement gap is substantially wider than previously thought and the results “provide an important call to action for districts and schools that are struggling to educate high-need students.”
