Santa Clara Unified School District officials presented detailed results from the 2024–25 CAASPP, CAST and cohort analyses at the board meeting, saying the district made modest overall gains but that large, persistent gaps remain for historically underserved groups.

District staff told the board the district’s overall California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) results rose modestly, and some schools posted substantial single‑year gains. “This is an unacceptable situation that we must change,” Mr. Stamp said, describing the gap between Asian and white students and Hispanic/Latino, multilingual learner and special education student groups.

The presentation, led by Mr. Stamp with Assistant Superintendent Dr. Kathy Knabel and Director Cameron Lewis, combined multi‑year cohort tracking with school spotlight pages and disaggregated data. Staff emphasized three findings: modest districtwide growth; notable single‑school success stories (including large gains at several elementary and secondary sites); and persistent underperformance by multilingual learners, students with IEPs and many Hispanic/Latino students, who trail the highest‑performing groups by roughly 20–30 percentage points in meeting California standards.

Why it matters: trustees asked for concrete next steps because the gaps affect large numbers of students and have long‑term consequences. Staff described district efforts already under way — strengthening foundational literacy (PK–5), expanding math coaching and new course designs for secondary math, scaling targeted interventions (tier 2/3), more interim assessments and expanded tutoring pilots — and said a sustained, coordinated focus on tier‑1 instruction and intervention systems is required.

Key details and context
- Cohort analysis: staff tracked the same students across grades (for example, grade 3→5, 5→8, 8→11) and reported where students moved between CAASPP performance bands (met/exceeded, nearly met, not met). Some cohorts showed meaningful growth (for example, elementary ELA cohort A showed a +7 percentage‑point gain in students meeting/exceeding), while math cohort A showed declines in the same grade span.
- Subgroup gaps: staff highlighted that Hispanic/Latino students, multilingual learners and students with IEPs are disproportionately represented among students remaining at the lowest performance band on multiple cohorts. For example, a cohort subgroup analysis showed that a majority of students who remained at the lowest ELA level between tested years were Hispanic/Latino.
- School spotlights: selected schools posted strong gains with coordinated leadership and focused instructional playbooks (examples discussed in the presentation included Wilcox, Pomeroy and Ponderosa). District staff recommended identifying and spreading the school‑level practices most likely to scale.
- Improvement strategies: staff described plans to (a) identify a short list of high‑impact, district‑wide tier‑1 instructional strategies; (b) expand coaching and job‑embedded professional learning; (c) broaden in‑class and after‑class tutoring pilots; and (d) use interim/common assessments to monitor impact more frequently than annual CAASPP results.

Quotes from the meeting
- "This is an unacceptable situation that we must change," Mr. Stamp said of persistent subgroup gaps. Mr. Stamp led the CAASPP presentation and cohort analysis.
- "We need to do something aggressive," Trustee Andy Rotterman told district leaders while pressing for faster, larger improvements.

What to watch next
- Staff said the district will present additional data on English learner progress, graduation and other local indicators in December and will bring an LCAP midyear report in February. Trustees asked staff to return with specific measures and short windows for evaluating new tutoring and intervention pilots so the board can assess return on investment.

Ending note: Board members expressed frustration at slow, uneven progress and urged district leaders to accelerate implementation of evidence‑based tier‑1 instruction and districtwide intervention systems so that gains made at high‑performing sites spread to schools that continue to lag.