In October, the California Department of Education (CDE) released 2024–25 assessment results that show continued progress made by K–12 students, including further movement to close equity gaps for socioeconomically disadvantaged students, Black/African American students, and Hispanic/Latino students.

Overall, the percentages of California students meeting or exceeding standard in English language arts (ELA), mathematics and science showed modest increases at a higher rate than the year prior, suggesting growing momentum.

For example:

• ELA: +1.8 percentage point change for students scoring Proficient or Advanced (about 4x larger than last year’s gains)
• Math: +1.8 percentage point change for students at Proficient or Advanced (twice as large as last year’s gains)
• Science: +2.0 percentage point change for students Proficient or Advanced (4x larger than last year’s gains)

In total, the proportions of students meeting grade-level expectations also grew to 70.6% in ELA, 61% in mathematics, and 86% in science.

From the California Department of Education:

Assessment results include data for the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) and the English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC).

Assessment results also show that Black or African American students and Hispanic or Latino students made higher-than-average improvements in ELA, math and science, as illustrated by the chart below.

The CDE announcement singled out several school districts for particularly significant increases in student achievement, including Compton Unified, Los Angeles Unified, Pittsburg Unified, Roseville Joint Union High School District and Sanger Unified.

The gains in student achievement come at a time when Community Schools are showing powerful learning results (see the Learning Policy Institute’s landmark report in “Our Union’s Fight for Community Schools.”

With our union’s steadfast advocacy and organizing for Community Schools and their shared governance model, students at these schools are thriving. The CDE recently recognized Pittsburg, where all 13 of the district schools are Community Schools “Community Schools for the Win.” In Pittsburg, students have seen impressive gains in literacy, math and science assessment scores.