‘First step’: AUSD talks about student test scores

By Michael Chaldu · Thu Oct 23 2025

‘Flat’ CAASPP results brings discussions about how district plans to help students improve scores

ATASCADERO — For its regular meeting on Oct. 21, the Atascadero Unified School District Board of Trustees devoted most of its time to recently released CAASPP test scores and plans to improve strategies to get those scores raised.

Being that it was the second meeting of the month, the board followed a new policy instituted by Superintendent Dr. Tom Bennett to have “Study Sessions,” where the trustees and staff members leave the dais and set up at tables on the floor in a conference-style format.

“When I started here, I shared importance of us taking a deep look of where we are and how are we doing academically,” said Bennett, who is in his first year as AUSD superintendent. “Today is our first big step.”

Bennett also added that this would be a “high-level conversation” about the district as a whole, rather than specific campuses.

With that, Bennett turned it over to Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services E.J. Rossi to go over the student CAASPP test scores. The CAASPP, “established by California Education Code (EC) sections 60640–60648.5, measures students’ knowledge and skills in English language arts/literacy (ELA), mathematics, science, and Spanish reading language arts, as well as students’ progress toward college and career readiness,” according to the CAASPP web site. The numbers being discussed were a percentage of students in the district who were deemed proficient in the chosen subject.

Rossi started with English and Language Arts (ELA) and showed a 10-year range of results, ending with the 2024-25 school year, where AUSD showed 52.0% of students proficient. Rossi said the score was above the state average, but below the average for San Luis Obispo County students.

Rossi also showed comparisons to nearby school districts Templeton Unified, Lucia Mar Unified, and Paso Robles Joint Unified. AUSD finished ahead of PRJUSD, but trailed TUSD and LMUSD. Comparisons were also made to outside districts that were similar to AUSD; those were Benicia, Martinez, Monrovia, Oakdale, and Escalon (near the LA International Airport). AUSD finished third among those groups.

In Math, AUSD showed a 40.1% proficiency tops among the local districts, but fourth best among the other comparison districts. In Science, AUSD showed a 36.9% score, second among local districts to Templeton, and third in the other comparisons.

Across all three subjects, Rossi observed that the AUSD averages were “flat,” not changing much in the last 10 years, outside of an “anomaly,” that saw lower scores in 2024, as well as the district average being above state, but below county across the board.

“Are we OK with where we are,” Rossi asked rhetorically, then answered, “I think we can do better.”

When it opened up for questions, Board President Denise McGrew-Kane asked about Rossi’s plan for improvement.

Rossi began with “the four questions” the district needs to address in improving learning: What do we want students to know? How are we going to know if they’re learning it? What are we doing if they don’t know? What are we doing if they do know?

“Those are great questions to have,” Rossi said, “but behind those questions is where you start looking at the infrastructure that supports it.”

Rossi said he believes the district needs better assessment tools to answer the questions he referred to earlier, saying the current assessment FastBridge was good to take them through the COVID era, but now they need to go to the next level.

McGrew-Kane, however, answered back, prefacing it with “Can I be blunt?” that the progress along these lines has been slow.

“I feel like we’ve been getting ready for a while now, and feeling a bit frustrated, because I remember having this conversation three years ago when we got FastBridge, and it’s three years later and we’re in the same spot,” she said.

McGrew-Kane also suggested that AUSD should talk to some of the districts who are scoring better and ask what they’re doing, with the idea that AUSD could adopt some of their ideas. She also said they could reach out beyond the “comparison” schools listed in the CAASPP report.

“I don’t want to talk to the school that’s 3 percent above us,” she said. “I want to talk to the school that’s 20 points above us and ask how they do it.”

Rossi answered that districts that scored much higher than AUSD have much different demographics and enrollment size, and didn’t think they were appropriate comparisons. However, he said the program he used to find those districts have filters that can be changed, so they could use different criteria.

At the end of the discussion, Bennett noted re-emphasized that the report and discussion was a “first step,” and the district now has some ideas on where they need to improve.

“The good news in all of this, is we have a good set of teacher and principals,” Bennett said. “We need a structure in place, using our data effectively, and need to find assessments that work well.”

The AUSD board will next meet on Tuesday, Nov. 4, with open session starting at 7 p.m.