Many high schoolers across San Diego Unified School District are getting good grades, but they aren’t overall performing equally well on standardized tests.
A new analysis by Voice of San Diego found wide gaps between the rate of juniors passing classes and the rate of juniors demonstrating proficiency on standardized tests.
The disparities can reach 60, 70 and 80 percentage points.
The data may reflect the ongoing struggle schools face as they recover from the pandemic, and matches up with what education experts are seeing across the nation: The relationship between test scores and grades has weakened over time. In other words, it’s easier than ever to get good grades, but kids are not performing better on standardized tests proportionately.
Recent district-wide changes in grading methods may be part of the reason as educators strive to be less punitive and more equitable in their grading.
Our Jakob McWhinney reports that San Diego Unified officials insist grades and standardized tests don’t measure the same thing, but the mismatch still may be cause for concern. Are parents being misled about how well their children are doing in school?
Border Report: So What Happened After Biden’s New Asylum Order Came Down?
Last week, President Joe Biden made sweeping changes to how asylum seekers are processed at the U.S.- Mexico border. They won’t be.
The new restrictions bar migrants from being granted asylum when there are increases of migrants at the southern border. And, in recent weeks, San Diego and Tucson have been the busiest Border Patrol sectors, with San Diego seeing around 6,000 to 8,000 crossings per week in May.
But in this week’s Border Report, Voice contributor Kate Morrissey reports that current numbers of people seeking asylum at the border are essentially the same as the week before the new policy was enacted.
Yet some critics are worried the new policy could become a repeat of Title 42, a pandemic era policy created by former president Donald Trump that constrained the numbers of people crossing the border and requesting asylum.
Migrating to the streets: With San Diego’s high number of border crossings and limited shelter space, The Union-Tribune reports that some of migrants are entering the county only to become homeless. Most shelters in the county don’t keep track of how many migrants enter their shelters, but the provider who oversees the city’s shelter referral system said 8 percent of requests over the past month came from migrants.
Immigration Officials Quietly Transferring Migrants to Other States
San Diego immigration officials have been quietly transferring dozens of migrants to other states, separating them from their attorneys and families who reside in San Diego or California, according to a report by Capital & Main.
This will likely cause massive delays in many migrants’ cases and probably won’t help the overwhelmed asylum system that we read about in the Border Report.
At least 51 migrants who have attorneys through San Diego County have been transferred since April, immigration attorneys told Capital & Main. Dozens of migrants who had private attorneys in San Diego have also been transferred, so that number is likely much higher. Migrants who were being detained at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego waiting for their cases to be processed have ended up in detention facilities in Texas, Colorado, Louisiana, Arizona and Georgia.
Some immigration attorneys said their clients were transferred without notice. Once they are transferred, it becomes nearly impossible for attorneys to get in touch with them.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials didn’t give a specific reason for the transfers, and they’re generally not supposed to transfer people who already have attorneys assigned to their case. But there are exceptions: ICE policy says transfers can be initiated for the health and safety of a migrant, or if a facility is overcrowded or shut down.
Mega Shelter Status Update
Mayor Todd Gloria and Council President Sean Elo-Rivera wrote in a joint statement late Monday after the City Council’s third closed-door briefing on lease terms for a potential mega-shelter site that city officials continue to “negotiate aggressively on behalf of San Diegans as we consider new and impactful solutions to address homelessness.” Their statement followed nearly an hour of public comments Monday morning raising concerns about the proposed shelter plan and lease. The City Council’s closed-door briefing also ran long, leading to its public session starting more than 90 minutes late on Monday afternoon.
A little more on the status: Gloria spokesperson Rachel Laing told Voice there are no immediate plans to send the lease proposal to a City Council committee or the full Council. Still, Laing confirmed that negotiations with the owner of the Middletown warehouse that the city wants to make a 1,000-bed shelter will continue.
Looking ahead: The City Council will vote today on the budget for the year that begins in July. Funding for the mega-shelter proposal, homeless programs and affordable housing are likely to be hot topics – and tough calls for councilmembers.
In Other News
- Academic workers at all University of California campuses were forced to halt their protests after a judge issued a temporary restraining order on Friday ordering workers to stop the strike and go back to classrooms and research labs. (KPBS)
- A recent county-led report found that 70 percent of small businesses in South Bay are economically impacted by the Tijuana sewage crisis. (Union-Tribune)
- The city of San Diego will pay $875,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by the son of a woman who overdosed in the back of a police car. The lawsuit claims the woman pleaded for help, but officers failed to do so. (CBS 8)
- Palomar Health Medical Group’s systems have been offline for five weeks since getting hit with cybersecurity issues. In an email to NBC 7 on Monday, Palomar officials said they “do not have any updates.” (NBC 7)
Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated the number of border crossings San Diego saw last month. It has been corrected to reflect that there were 6,000 to 8,000 border crossings each week in May. Some language in this post has also been updated to better clarify the situation at the border.
The Morning Report was written by Tigist Layne and Lisa Halverstadt. It was edited by Lisa Halverstadt and Scott Lewis.