So many schools in Monterey County, so little time

California officials handed score cards to all state schools last week, as you probably remember from this story. Many schools went up, some went down, and overall, academic performance at Monterey County public schools declined for the third year in a row.

This trend deserves further examination, something I hope to get around to in the upcoming weeks. Also, another trend that's been brought to my attention and deserves further scrutiny is the increased use of "alternative" testing for special education children -- something that data crunching guru Doug McRae believes is "inflating" test results statewide. Here's his story on EdSource, in case you're curious.

At the local level, there are several local districts that are using high proportion of alternative testings. I'll be looking into that sometime in the near future.

But I'd also love to look into high performing schools. Bay View Academy, for instance, hit its scores off the park by scoring 849 in its inaugural year -- three points ahead of Monte Vista Elementary, which, given Monterey demographics, is actually not very surprising.  I'm sure folks at both schools are very pleased, as they should.

Also noteworthy is the Monterey Bay Academy, which also went up by 21 points in the API scale. I'd love to explore what the school's doing, how they're tackling the challenges other schools have with low income, English learners, and other "subgroups." Stay tuned.

Finally, two schools of the Greenfield Union School District made impressive gains. Mary Chapa went up by 108 points. Its sister campus, El Camino Technology Academy, went up 73 points. And nearby Cesar Chavez went down by 33 points. Why the discrepancy?

So many stories...