Preliminary results of the 2024-25 school year shows Fresno Unified students’ academic achievement grew less than expected from the year before, Superintendent Misty Her told GV Wire Wednesday.

But with new learning outcomes beginning this year and top staff settling into their positions, Her wants the district to exceed statewide improvements.

Districtwide, students progressed 2% in English Language Arts and 2% in math from the 2023-24 school year, Her said.

“In a year last year where we had a lot of interims — I was interim superintendent, we had an interim (chief academic officer) — I actually am really proud of our staff,” Her said. “I mean we were so close in English Language Arts to get 3%. I think this sets us off on a really good path and a trajectory to get us even better results.”

Superintendent’s Goal? Beat the Statewide Improvement Rate

The district has not yet released in-depth results from the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress tests held earlier this year.

In 2023-24, 34.72% of students either met or exceeded grade level standards for English while only 25.14% met or exceeded grade level standards for math, according to the state test dashboard.

With the school year beginning on Monday, her data team is calculating the numbers to develop a “reasonable” expectation for growth. While she said 5% “would be great, she has her eyes on the statewide rate.

“At Fresno Unified, we’re going to chase the state. Our goal is to outperform the state,” Her said.

Sanger Unified Reaches Pre-Pandemic Levels. Fresno Unified? Not Yet

The goal for most school districts is a return to pre-pandemic test levels. Sanger Unified, which released its test scores Monday, grew 4.25% in English and 3.22% in math.

That progress brings Sanger to its 2018-19 achievement levels.

To get to pre-pandemic levels, Fresno Unified will need at least 38% of students reading and writing at grade level and 29.85% doing math at grade level.

Superintendent Her leaned on “goals and guardrails” the district is implementing this year. The first is a promise to have 80% of first graders reading by 2030.

Other goals include learning intervention, and college and career readiness.

“We have schools and we have teachers that are doing outstanding jobs with their test scores that have come in and we plan to go and learn from it and it starts to scale into the rest of our school district,” Her said. “So my prediction is that we’re going to get even better results this coming year.”