Recently, Los Angeles school superintendent Alberto Carvalho held a celebratory press conference to trumpet the incremental increase in the district’s student test scores, but while he was focusing on some bright trees, the dark forest remains—a large majority of Los Angeles students still fail to meet state grade-level standards in English and math.
The state standardized test is called the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP). It is administered in grades three through eight and in grade eleven. Students are measured according to whether they meet grade-level state standards in subjects such as English and math.
In his press conference, Carvalho said that test scores had rebounded from the time of the COVID pandemic. However, the reality is not as clearcut as that.
On the 2024-25 CAASPPP English test, 46.5 percent of Los Angeles students met grade-level state standards. That percentage ishigher than in the previous three years, but below the 53.8 percent meeting grade-level standards in 2020-21.
On the 2024-25 CAASPP math test, 36.7 percent of Los Angeles students met grade-level standards, which was higher than the 29.3 percent in 2020-21.
While the incremental gains in Los Angeles should be acknowledged, the fact remains that 53.5 percent of Los Angeles students failed to score at grade level in English and 63.3 percent failed to score at grade level in math.
NBC-TV’s Los Angeles affiliate underscored this fact, reporting: “While there has been improvement there is a long road ahead” as it pointed out that sizeable majorities of Los Angeles students failed to score at grade level in English and math.
Yet, in the face of this uncomfortable reality, Carvalho pivoted as he blamed the Trump administration’s ICE activities for creating insecurity among students.
However, the fact is that large majorities of Los Angeles students were failing to achieve grade-level competence for years before there was an increase in immigration enforcement in Los Angeles.
Also, the incremental improvement in CAASPP scores must be balanced with Los Angeles’ student scores on the National Assessment for Educational Progress, which is referred to as the nation’s report card and which tests fourth and eighth-grade students on reading and math.
Huge majorities of Los Angeles students failed to score at the proficient level in the basic subjects.
For example, in 2024, on the NAEP eighth-grade reading test, a staggering 78 percent of Los Angeles students failed to score at the proficient level, which was higher than the 2022 pandemic-influenced result of 72 percent of L.A. eighth graders failing to hit proficiency.
Worse, on the 2024 NAEP math exam, an astonishing 82 percent of Los Angeles eighth graders failed to score at the proficient level, which was basically unchanged from 2022.
The bottom line is that both state and national tests show that large majorities of students continue to be failed by the public schools in Los Angeles.
That is why giving students in Los Angeles and in other low-performing school districts more educational choices is so critical—children need an exit ticket out of these government failure factories.
Yet, AB 84, a bill that would eliminate a significant segment of California’s charter school sector is making its way through the State Legislature.
Also, while the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Donald Trump contains a federal school-choice provision, states must agree to implement it. Given Gov. Gavin Newsom’s hostility to anything to do with the president, it is unlikely that California will agree to do so.
If California parents and their children are to have more educational choices besides the regular public schools, then they will have to make their voices heard in the halls of the Capitol.
Lance Izumi is senior director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute. He is the author of the PRI book “The Great Parent Revolt: Teachers, Students, and Parents Expose the Collapse of Learning in America’s Schools.”