Oakdale Joint Unified School District continues to shine in the area of academics.
Results were recently revealed for the 2022 Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium (SBAC), placing OJUSD in the top spot overall for Stanislaus County’s Unified School Districts.
“I’m really pleased and excited for our whole community, but especially for our teachers and our students,” Assistant Superintendent Curriculum and Instruction, Gillian Wegener stated. “I know they’ve worked really, really hard.”
The standardized test is administered in the spring of each school year to students in grades three through eight and high school juniors in the areas of English Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics. The test was not administered in spring of 2020 due to the pandemic.
“Oakdale was number one in the county among unified districts,” Wegener confirmed of the 2021 testing, noting she felt the success of the results was an important “boost” for students and teachers in the district.
The assistant superintendent shared some years there has not been claim or target data, due to state response which makes the review a little more difficult. Students currently are getting a scale score, but don’t have a current breakdown of how it applies to various standards.
“It just says a lot about the support that education has in this community,” Wegener said of the recent results. “Having the kids take the test, a standardized test is not always fun. But it does usually give us information that can help us grow our students. It usually gives us information that we can use to identify student areas of strength and weakness and we can address those areas of need.”
Wegener hopes that the state will get back to being able to provide claim and target data soon, but it does not appear that it will be able to happen in spring of 2023.
“It’s very nice to have good news and it’s very nice to have a point of pride for our district that is being recognized throughout the county,” Wegener said. “I just have huge respect for our teachers getting their feet on the ground and just helping their students to succeed and they’re going to keep doing that.”
