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When students walk into Gina Gray’s English classroom in Middle College High School on any given testing day, she greets them with encouragement: “Tap into your genius. You have it,” Gray reminds the 11th graders. “Just do your best. … All we can ask you is to show what you know.”

Students across the Los Angeles Unified School District did just that when they took the test, known as the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP).  The 2025 test scores mark a milestone for the district — year-over-year growth of LAUSD students is outpacing that of the state, and students are now performing at higher levels than they did pre-pandemic. 

“Thinking that everyone’s gonna just be at the top, that’s an unrealistic goal for teaching and learning,” Gray said. “If everyone came into the ninth grade knowing every standard and every rule, what would be my role?”

According to recently released scores on the 2025 state Smarter Balanced Assessments, more than 46% of LAUSD students met or exceeded state standards in English, marking more than a 3% increase from the previous year. And in math, the district’s scores improved nearly 4%, with 36.76% meeting or exceeding state standards. 

“Things are getting better. We’re not only moving in the right direction. We’re leading in that respect,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom at a press conference, applauding progress made in both Los Angeles Unified and across the state.

At another Los Angeles Unified press briefing, Karla Estrada, the district’s deputy superintendent of instruction, attributed the uptick in scores to the work of its credentialed teachers, professional development opportunities for staff, high-quality instructional materials, small group instruction, and additional interventions, like tutoring. 

Still, more than half of LAUSD’s student body is not meeting state standards in English, and nearly two-thirds are not meeting them in math. Just over a quarter met state standards in science. LAUSD falls behind the state average on all three.

Across the district, roughly 36% of African American students and about 41% of Hispanic students met or exceeded standards in English — compared to about 69% of white students and roughly 80% of Asian students. Despite the progress, there remains a wide gulf between the performance of Hispanic and African American students and their Asian and white peers. 

In a district with more than a thousand schools and 387,152 TK-12 students, test score performance varies widely. 

For example, 90% of students at Wonderland Avenue Elementary, located in the Hollywood Hills region, met or exceeded state standards in English — compared to just 12% at Manhattan Place Elementary, where the vast majority of students are eligible for free or reduced meals, according to Ed-Data. 

Community member J. Manuel Urrutia, who is also a UCLA researcher emeritus, doesn’t feel he can be as glass-half-full about the scores.

“That would be fine and good if it was a single glass. But we’re talking about, in this case, more than 700 different glasses that are filled,” he said. “Some of them are filled. Some of them barely have anything in it.” 

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District officials, including Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, have recognized that despite the progress, there is still a long way to go.

“For those who will say that it’s insufficient, we all agree. Nothing will ever be enough for our kids,” Carvalho said at last week’s school board meeting. “But progress over time needs to be recognized. Otherwise, we are insulting those who actually achieve these gains for our students.”

Heidy Galicia is the mother of two LAUSD students and two district alumni who have gone on to college. Galicia’s daughter, Mariana, a senior, is ranked at the top of her high school, Linda Esperanza Marquez High School in Huntington Park. 

She believes her children’s success has been strongly aided by parent involvement — both at home and at physical school sites. 

“I went to meetings, conferences, spoke with teachers, asked how I could support my children at home, in addition to the support they receive from school,” Galicia said in Spanish. “Parents need to get involved. So, I feel that this helped my children develop a love for school and strive academically. And I was always attentive. I have been attentive to everything they need to this day.”

While standardized tests provide a look at how a student, school and district are doing, there are other ways to capture progress, Gray said. Her school, Middle College High School, saw a roughly 4% increase in students meeting or exceeding standards in English and a more than 14% increase in math from the previous year. 

The key, she said, is creating an environment where students feel safe and comfortable asking for help — and where they also feel they can take pride in their strengths. 

“It was really good to have a collaborative learning environment where the students feel comfortable to hold their hand up and say, ‘Hey, I know this! I can help!’ and also the space where they can say, ‘I need a little more support with this. Can you show me?’” Gray said.

While standardized tests can be a useful indicator for some, Gray said they can also fall short because they can’t account for students’ varied learning and testing styles.

“There’s no space for the student who has anxiety about sitting for a long period of time to show you what they can know in that setting because you only offer it in one way,” Gray said.

In her class, students who are anxious and need to stand up or take a walk can do so, she said. “I can give you more time with the writing,” she said. “A standardized test doesn’t do that. It’s only one way to learn and one way to record.”