I heard from a reader after my story on South Bay Union Superintendent Jose Espinoza dropped last week, and it got me curious: What do the district’s academic outcomes look like before and after he took the top administrative job?
I looked into it. Here’s what I found:
- Students have made small gains in English and math since Espinoza started: Roughly a third of South Bay Union students met the state’s English language arts/literacy standard, and about 20% met the math standard during the 2021-22 school year — Espinoza’s first year as the district’s superintendent, state data shows. Now, English and math test scores are up roughly 6 percentage points.
- Espinoza took over the district during the COVID-19 pandemic. That affects the data. Testing was suspended across the state during the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years.
- South Bay Union’s math scores have not rebounded to pre-pandemic levels under the prior superintendent.
Before Espinoza, Kate McNamara led the Imperial Beach-area district for nearly nine years. Here’s a chart of how test scores compare during her tenure:
Note: These scores all continue to be far lower than the county average.
