SBX5 4 requires the Superintendent to annually create a list of 1,000 schools ranked by their Academic Performance Index (API). The list shall have the same ratio of elementary, middle, and high schools as existed in state decile rank 1 for the 2008–09 school year (i.e., 2009 Base API).
Determining the Ratio of Elementary, Middle, and High Schools
State decile ranks are provided each year with the Base API report. Schools with a state decile rank of 1 in the 2009 Base API report were evaluated to determine the ratio of elementary, middle, and high schools. California Education Code Section 52052(g) indicates that only schools with 100 valid test scores should be included in the API rankings. Therefore, schools with less than 100 valid scores reported on the 2009 Base API data file are excluded from the decile 1 ratio. After removing schools with less than 100 valid scores, 68.7 percent (or 687 of the 1,000 on list) are elementary schools, 16.5 percent (or 165 of the 1,000 on list) are middle schools, and 14.8 percent (or 148 of the 1,000 on list) are high schools.
Schools Excluded from the Final Open Enrollment List Per SBX5 4
Court, community, community day, charter schools, and schools with less than 100 valid API scores are excluded from the list.
Identifying Ten Percent of Schools in Each Local Educational Agency
SBX5 4 also requires that no local educational agency (LEA) shall have more than ten percent of its schools on the list. However, when the LEA’s number of schools is not evenly divisible by ten, the ten percent number of schools shall be rounded up to the next whole number of schools.
The California Department of Education will count all schools in the LEA (except closed schools) as the LEA’s total number of schools to determine the ten percent number.
Creating the List of 1,000 Schools
Creating the list starts with the identification of the 687 elementary schools, 165 middle schools, and 148 high schools that have the lowest API scores within the criteria described above. This list is ranked from lowest API score to highest API score. When an LEA on the list has reached its ‘10 percent’ cap, subject to the roundup provision, the LEA’s schools with the highest API scores are dropped from the list until the LEA has no more than its ‘10 percent’ number of schools on the list. Schools with the next lowest API scores remaining in the pool are then added to create the next list of 1,000 schools that maintains the required ratio of schools. This process continues until a final list of 1,000 schools is achieved that both maintains the ratio of 68.7 percent elementary schools, 16.5 percent middle schools, and 14.8 percent high schools and does not exceed any LEA’s ‘10 percent’ number of schools.
