8-15-08 Here is what the Newhall Signal said about the Hart District High Schools.
"The district's overall English-language arts score of 61 percent was nearly 20 percent higher than the county score of 42 percent and 15 percent higher than the state's 46 percent score."
Here's what the perennial failure of Vasquez high school is, only 41% are proficient or advanced and 59% were below proficient, with 29% far below basic. This also ignores the fact that Hart district has a significant number of English learners and Acton has virtually none.
The scores show some improvement in the eighth (52%) and ninth (46%) grade students but shows a dismal failure at 10th (31%) and 11th (36%) grade. The 10th and 11th grade students are below the average test results for the State of California, the County of Los Angeles, and even the total failure school district, LAUSD.
After years of failed test results from Vasquez, the question has to be, are our students below the academic quality of LAUSD or is it just the failure of the school board, the administrators, the union leaders and teachers employed by the these leaders?
The test for mathematics (algebra I) shows only 14% of the students taking the exam were proficient or better, that means 86% were below proficient to total failure. Less than a third of the students in the entire high school took the exam, the majority failed to even take the exam.
The results in other subjects were equally dismal. To read it for yourself, go to http://star.cde.ca.gov/star2008/Viewreport.asp and insert the county and district name.
We now have a new superintendent and new High School principal and maybe the small improvement at the eighth and ninth grade is their result.
But, the continued program to spend all of the bond money on a Gym for this failed high school is wrong. Everyone must VOTE NO on the November CF bond and any other bond that is not substantially required by law to be spent on educational facilities. All bonds must stop the Brighter Group and its clones from any authority to redirect the money to athletics, as the proposed bond in November does.
Vote no on the sports Bond in November. The Brighter group led by Distaso should leave town and allow competent people who care about students to run the school board.