News

With school back in session and your impending move to a better home, your thoughts turn to finding the best education for your kids. It’s easy enough to research what schools exist around Arcadia. Use Google to find facilities near our Griffin community and then click on the website of each institution. You’ll get such basic information as registration information, curriculum standards, clubs, and activities.

Uncovering whether those schools are up to par educationally is another matter. After all, each one claims to excel academically. What’s needed is some objective measure against a generally accepted standard. You can’t get more objective than our local news network, Arcadia Patch, which proclaimed in a recent headline “Arcadia Unified Test Scores Among Highest in Southern California.” 

CAASPP

The source of this good news was the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, a rigorous statewide test. On August 24, the California Department of Education released the following results of that effort.

• Compared to just 37 percent of state students meeting or exceeding the math standard, 77 percent of Arcadia Unified students triumphed.
• For English Language Arts, the statewide average was 49 percent while at Arcadia Unified, the average reached 77 percent.

This component measured how well students understand what they read and hear, communicate in writing, research information, and present their findings. 

About Arcadia Unified School District

The mission of the AUSD is to ensure that every school provides engaging quality work that challenges students and produces meaningful learning. It believes that the staff, families, and community must engage equally to ensure student success.

The district is responsible for 11 facilities, including one high school, three middle schools, and six elementary schools. It also offers the Rancho Learning Center as a resource for independent study in grades 8 to 12, home-schooling for grades 1 to 8, and an opportunity program for grades 7 to 12 that is designed to deal with academic or behavior issues that interfere with educational success. 

SARC

School Accountability Report Cards are available for all institutions in the AUSD, so you can research a particular facility for your child up to the 2014 to 2015 school year. Among the highlights:

• The foreign language program for the 3,454 students at Arcadia High School includes Advanced-Placement Chinese and Spanish, standard Spanish and Chinese, French and Japanese. While many high schools have been cutting back on their arts programs, Arcadia High opened a performing arts center with three additional classrooms in recent years.
• The Parent Music Club at Foothills Middle School provides volunteers for music programs and special events as well as helps to fund the school’s participation in parades and festivals. It forms just one aspect of an active Parent Teacher Student Association that sponsors theme days, the annual book fair and other events.
• Customized teaching is common at Holly Avenue Elementary, which caters to learners at all levels. General education students often mentor students with moderate disabilities in the special education classes. Upper grade level students often pair up with primary students in special buddy classes to offer help in everything from reading to computers.

All this information adds up to an A-plus for your kids. If you want to check out what we have to offer personally, please contact us for a tour of our development.