By Zachary Adler
After a yearlong promotional blitz of “850 or Bust,” it seems that Daniel Pearl Magnet High School, has busted.
“I was disappointed in the drop because I know that the staff and the students worked hard to focus on increasing our API,” said Principal Deborah Smith at first reaction to DPMHS’ 2012-2013 API scores.
After a large jump from 803 to an astounding 823 API points from the California Standardized Test, DPMHS’ scores dropped last year for the first time in school history. But this is only a small drop of 13 points, which puts DPMHS at a respectable score of 810.
“After a school makes large gains like we did in 2011-2012, oftentimes the following year there is what we would consider a slight correction, which is often a slight drop,” Smith said.
This drop was also due to a change in how the federal government calculates API scores for schools, which has led to more widespread changes.
“We do have fewer students in ‘far below basic,’ than we did before, so there was improvement, but not in ‘advanced’ and ‘proficient’,” Smith said.
This drop is also due to a large influx of freshmen who decided to take algebra in middle school and were not particularly successful, thus not doing well on the algebra portion of the CST.
