Rosemary Rises Above Statewide API Benchmark

The road has been a long one for this Campbell school but its efforts were worth the wait.

Rosemary Elementary School raised its Academic Performance Index scores by 40 points this year, pushing it past the place its been for the last five years--below the state benchmark--to a place closer to where school officials and educators alike want it to be.

"We are excited," says Campbell Union School District Superintendent Dr. Eric Andrew. "The Rosemary staff and community have worked very hard to perfect their instruction. It's so gratifying to see all the extra hard work, extra time has paid off." 

The API is a tool that the state uses in order to rate a school's performance on scale of 200 to 1,000. California's benchmark, or expected average is 800.

The elementary school, home to 496 students, raised its API score from 772 in 2011 to 812. It also raised its scores among its subgroups—Latino students, socioeconomically disadvantaged student, English learners, and students with disabilities—with two out of the four surpassing the 800 benchmark.

This last portion is an important one because of the 275 students that took the tests for the API, the majority fall under these **subgroups:

• Latinos: 233
• Socioeconomically Disadvantaged: 248
• English Learner: 224
• Student with Disability: 24

"Rosemary is a school that is predominately comprised of English language learners and the recent success shows that those students are doing what’s necessary to close that achievement gap," Andrew says.

The superintendent says that the school was able to achieve this kind of growth through the implementation of an academic program called, "Rocket Time."

"It’s one of the schools that is becoming a model demonstration school for Rocket Time, where students are clustered to receive specific instruction to be successful not only for tests but also for learning critical thinking and other 21st century skills," he said.

Although the growth was met with excitement and pride from both school district administrators and school staff, the work is not over.

"We’ve now hit that target of 800 but we’re not satisfied yet," says Rosemary Elementary School Principal Brian Schmaedick. "This success is a reflection of the sustained effort by staff of hard work and a system in place. It’s a reflection of the commitment made by the district and board to the teachers."

This is his first year at the elementary school, so he says he can't take any of the credit for the gains, he says.

"Being new here, it's easy to see this from an outsider’s point of view," Schmaedick says. "There’s a great climate here. People are completely dedicated to the students. The staff is relentless and it's inspiring to work with them."

Former Rosemary School Principal Edna Laskin could not be reached for comment at the time this article was published but both Schmaedick and Andrew had nothing but good things to say about her efforts.

"Edna is a very strong, instructional leader," Andrew says. "She’s able to build community with the staff and parents. Her leadership skills were demonstrated not only with staff but working with the students, in the classroom and on the playground."

"She has the ability to create those relationships where people want to do their best," he says. "She’s a collaborative leader."

Laskin is currently working at the school district promoting the Campbell RTI model, which is what Rosemary used to achieve its academic gains.

*All API score information gathered from the California Department of Education's website.

**Individual students can fall under multiple subgroups.

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