District level API data bonanza!

I've taken the recently released 2007 API Growth Data and compiled a spreadsheet with various views on the district level API results. The spreadsheet is found here:

California school district scores, 2007 Growth API
ca district api 07 gdb.xls

What will you find in this spreadsheet? Data. Lots of data. Ten separate worksheets with different focuses. No analysis. The worksheets include

• A list of all districts in the five Bay Area counties sorted by district API: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Santa Clara, and San Francisco. All reported data is included for each district, including sub-groups.
• A list of the 50 largest districts, as measured by the number of API test takers. This allows one to compare SFUSD against other large districts.
• A set of seven different worksheets that compile the districts with the largest populations of various identified sub-groups: African American, Asian, Hispanic, and White students, as well as Socioeconomically Disadvantaged, English Learner, and Students With Disabilities
• A list of all results for all California districts, sorted by district name -- included for reference purposes only.

What does it all mean? What does the spreadsheet show? That is fodder for debate. I've compiled the data and I want to make it available for others to share their insights.

What jumps out at me confirms what we already know.

• SFUSD is failing its black students. African American student performance lags badly behind the results of other districts with large AA populations. Not only are we faced with a wide gap within our district, we are not doing as well as other districts to serve our AA students.
• We're getting mediocre results for our Asian students too. There may be demographic reasons why our Asian students are not excelling, relating to English fluency and immigration status. But the results are not great on a raw score basis.
• SFUSD is not among the larger districts for Hispanics or Whites. So I did not list SFUSD in those worksheets. If you do plug our numbers in for those groups, we're pretty mediocre with the Hispanic students. White kids are doing pretty well.
• Results for Students With Disabilities are mediocre. Not sure if we can usefully measure our SpEd services by looking at API results, but on that measure we do not stand out.
• The district is doing well with Socioeconomically Disadvantaged and English Learner students. Very well. Which probably helps explain a lot of other shortfalls.

One other factoid that jumped out at me was the huge number of tiny districts. What's up with that? From a policy perspective, what sense is there in having one district -- LAUSD -- with half a million students at the same time there are 173 districts with fewer than 100 test takers? We hear that small districts are in financial distress. Maybe the solution includes a healthy dose of consolidation?

Update: added San Mateo county districts to the Bay Area district worksheet