Ventura Unified committee reviews California Dashboard data and socioeconomic links as part of school-closure work

District staff spent the bulk of the meeting walking the School Closure Advisory Committee through the California School Dashboard and explaining how those color-coded performance indicators factor into the committee's work.

"The data that I'm going to show is just to create foundational understanding for committee members," Dr. Castro told the group before the data review, saying the presentation was meant to provide background rather than replace deliberation. Greg Bis, assistant superintendent for educational services, then outlined the dashboard's indicators — English language arts, math, science, English learner progress, chronic absenteeism, suspension rate, graduation and a college-and-career indicator — and how the state combines status and year-to-year change to assign colors.

Staff repeatedly emphasized participation effects. Bis noted the state treats any student group with less than 95% test participation as at risk of receiving the lowest possible score: "If I have 90% participation, the 5% of students under the 95% threshold are automatically given the lowest possible score," he said, and that rule can depress colors even when instruction or student growth has improved.

Dr. Castro summarized a persistent pattern in district data: ELA performance tends to exceed math by roughly a 12-point margin across student groups. He and Bis also stressed the dashboard's dependence on definitions and cohorts; chronic absenteeism, for example, applies only to K–8 and is defined as missing 10% or more of the school year — "if they miss more than 18 days they are designated as chronically absent," a staffer said — while college-and-career indicators apply only at the high-school level and incorporate multiple pathways beyond test scores.

Committee members used the presentation to press staff on several technical points: how student mobility affects school scores, why some subgroup tiles show "NA" (too small a cohort to report), and how growth-versus-status considerations are represented in the 5x5 detail behind each color.

Staff said the dashboard is one data stream among many the committee will weigh; they committed to posting the presentation, data tables and Q&A on the committee web page within two business days so members and the public can review the same source files.

Next steps: the committee will consider these data, along with facility fit assessments, special-program inventories and fiscal analyses, at upcoming meetings before forming recommendations to the board.