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Southern Marin Elementary School Districts' Academic Performance

After looking at the financials of a few Elementary school Districts in Southern and Central Marin, I decided to uncover their respective academic performance. They all claim to provide excellent education. I just wanted to verify and confirm that this is the case. The Elementary school Districts I will look at include:

1. Mill Valley School District (MVSD)
2. Ross Valley School District (RVSD)
3. Larkspur - Corte Madera School District (LCM)
4. Kentfield School District (Kentfield)

I will compare their academic performance with the average for California.

To assess their academic performance, I will look at the yearly outcomes for the CAASPP English Language Arts/Literacy (CAASPP English) and the CAASPP Math tests.

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English testing

As shown below, all 4 Marin County school Districts perform far better than the State on CAASPP English with over 70% of students falling into the "Meet" and "Exceed" categories. Meanwhile, the State percentage is steadily below 50%.

Notice that both MVSD and Kentfield did not report any data during the 2021 school year ended in June 30, 2021. This was the first full scholar year affected by COVID. And, many school districts did not report data in that year.

If we look at the above data, LCM and the State experience a flat to declining performance since COVID-2021 school year. Meanwhile, the other districts experience a steady rise over the same period. Nevertheless, LCM's academic performance is still far superior to the State's average.

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Math testing

When testing for math performance, the story is very much the same. The Marin County Districts perform far better than the State with over 60% of students falling into the "Meet" or "Exceed" categories. Meanwhile, the State corresponding percentage is much under 40%.

The above data tells you not only how good the Marin County Districts are but how deficient the State average is. How can California remain at the cutting edge of the emerging AI-information age, when only one third of its students meet or exceed the math standards. These students in Elementary school represent California's future 15 years down the road. From this vantage point, California's future does not look great.

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Next, let's compare the 5 Marin County Districts with the top 5 Districts in the State. Because many of the top Districts are "Unified" covering the grades k - 12 instead of k - 8 for "Elementary" districts, I will focus on a single grade level-8 to render the comparison between districts consistent.

I will also focus exclusively on the "Exceed" category because in this specific situation it will be more informative, let me explain why.

Let's say you have 2 Districts where both 100% of the students fall into either the "Meet" or "Exceed" categories. In the first one all its students fall into the "Exceed" category. Meanwhile, in the second one they all fall into the "Meet" category. The first District is obviously a superior performer vs the second one. That's why I will focus solely on the Exceed %.

The top 5 Districts in the State (according to Perplexity) are the following ones:

The above list of the top 5 is surprising. This is because smaller Elementary Districts have a greater variance in academic performance. Thus, you would expect such smaller Districts to dominate both the top and bottom ranks of academic performance (the tails of the distribution). Unified Districts are much larger (as shown above), and they should be associated with a smaller variance in academic performance. Thus, you would not expect Unified District to populate the tails of the distribution, including the top ranks. But, in this case they apparently do according to Perplexity.

The Unified Districts being much larger make for more representative benchmarks for our Marin County Districts.

There are 517 Elementary and 345 Unified districts in California. Thus, the mentioned top 5 are in the 99th percentile in academic performance. That's a pretty formidable peer group to benchmark our Marin County Districts.

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English testing vs the top 5

The Exceed 45% in English level (horizontal dashed red line) differentiates fairly well between the top 5 that are for the most part above that level and the Marin County districts that are mostly below this same level.

Notice that Palos Verdes, one of the top 5, does not appear to perform that much better than the Marin County Districts.

None of the above suggests that the Marin County Districts perform poorly. It is simply benchmarking them vs the best.

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Math testing vs the top 5

For Math the story is very much the same as for English. Again Palos Verdes' performance is weaker than the top 4, and is not all that different than the Marin County districts.

Conclusion

Based on the CASPP testing outcomes in English and Math, the quality of Elementary education in Central and Southern Marin is very good. The latter is far superior than for the State average. And, it is not that far off from the top 5 districts in the State.

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