Healthy Development Measurement Toolkit

Indicator PI.2.c Proportion of schools achieving an Academic Performance Index Base of 800 or more

Data Source

California Department of Education. Local Educational Agency (LEA) List of Schools. 2008 Growth Academic Performance Index (API) Report. Accountability Progress Reporting. Accessed online in July 2009. Available at: http://data1.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/.

Map and table prepared by City and County of San Francisco, Department of Public Health, Environmental Health Section using ArcGIS software.

Map and table data are presented by planning neighborhood. Detailed information regarding geographic units of analysis, their definitions, and their boundaries can be found in the HDMT at the following links:

http://www.thehdmt.org/etc/Geographic_Units_of_Analysis.pdf

http://www.thehdmt.org/data_map_methods.php

Explanation and Limitations

Proportion of schools with more than 800 API base equal the number of schools that obtained a rank of 800 or more divided by the number of schools in that zipcode, excluding county schools, such as Hilltop that do not calculate API rank.

Weighted Average API = number of students in each school used as a weighting factor

X = w1x1 + w2x2 + w3x3 . . . . . . / w1 + w2 + w3 . . . .

w= the number of students

x = API score

State legislation, the Public Schools Accountability Act (PSAA) of 1999 (Chapter 3, Statutes of 1999), established the Academic Performance Index (API), which summarizes a school's or local educational agency's (LEA) academic performance and progress on statewide assessments. The API also is used as an additional indicator for federal Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) requirements. (An LEA is a school district or county office of education.)  The API is on a scale of 200 to 1000. For details on the calculation of the API score, please consult the CA Department of Education's Academic Performance Index website at: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/ac/ap/.   The target of API 800 or more is a state defined target. For more information on API base, growth and goals, visit: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/ac/ap/index.asp

Three SFUSD schools, Rooftop Alternative Elementary, Bessie Carmichael Elementary, and Claire Lilienthal K-8 schools are each located on two separate campuses.  Specifically, the Burnett campus of Rooftop Elementary serves grades K-4 and grades 5-8 of Rooftop are located on the Corbett campus; the Madison campus of Claire Lilienthal serves K-2 and the Scott campus of Lilienthal serves 3-8; and the Seventh Street campus of Bessie Carmichael serves K-5 and the Harrison campus serves 6-8.  However the academic profile and standardized testing scores are reported as though there is only one school on one campus.  Because SFDPH is calculating API scores by planning neighborhood district, the campuses were counted as separate schools with the same API score.  SFDPH used 2007-2008 school enrollment data by grade (from the CA Dept of Education) to calculate the number of students on each campus.

As of July 2009, 112 of the 114 SFUSD schools were included in neighborhood API score calculations.  The two schools not included were: Five Keys Charter School, which is a school with the Sheriff's office to help prisoner students develop educational skills and Newcomer High School, which serves as a one year transition high school for recent immigrants and refugees learning English.  Both schools are intended as transition schools and although they have started reporting API scores, the schools try to not evaluate students using standardized testing.

Many other factors affect school quality in addition to academic performance. Additional measures of quality could include: availability of books, supplies and other resources; physical and social structures of the school; actual and perceived safety at the schools; proximity to green space; training and experience of teachers and staff; involvement of parents in children"s education; opportunities for extracurricular activities; whether the school is used as a multi-use facility in the afternoons, evenings and weekends; and existence of afterschool programs. Thus it is important to recognize that Academic Performance is just one of many possible indicators to assess school environment.

Similar to many other urban areas, San Francisco public schools face the challenge of trying to create a high quality, integrated academic environment that compensates for existing racial, ethnic and economic segregation by neighborhood. The education-related indicators in Objective PI.2 seek to illustrate these tensions/tradeoffs by providing multiple different indicators affecting the accessibility and quality of educational facilities in San Francisco. One measure alone cannot capture the complexity of student achievement nor the various push and pull factors causing children and families to leave or move to San Francisco. Therefore educational achievement and performance must be considered both within the broader context of neighborhood, social and economic conditions which are addressed in other parts of the HDMT.

Valuing the historic and social importance of integration, San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) has experimented with a number of different school assignment policies to promote diverse, high performing schools. Currently, SFUSD allows any student to apply to any school in the city. However, there are often situations where there are more requests for spaces at a particular school than seats available. Whenever requests are greater than the number of seats available, the SFUSD uses a Student Assignment System to guide student selection.  More information about the SFUSD Student Assignment System is available at: http://portal.sfusd.edu/template/default.cfm?page=policy.placement.process

Why is this a Community Health Indicator?

Academic performance is one of multiple indicators of school quality. Academic performance is related to educational achievement, which both predicts positive health outcomes directly as well as the effects of education on lifetime earnings.^a

Educational achievement and student performance have been associated with each of the following aspects of the physical school environment: air quality, temperature, lighting, acoustics, building age/quality, school size and class size.^b

A study of Los Angeles Unified School Facilities found that compliance with health and safety measures in schools was associated with improved academic performance.^c