Many San Diego Unified kindergartners are already arriving at school behind grade level in reading, and reading scores take a hit when students reach middle school, district testing data show. This month San Diego Unified released the first major batch of scores from its own internal literacy tests taken during the fall, which are different from state standardized tests. The district will administer these internal tests to elementary and middle school students in the winter and spring to see how they’re progressing. State standardized test scores measure performance only once a year and are published months after students have moved on to the next grade. Overall, San Diego Unified students score above standard on state tests for English language arts. About 54% of San Diego Unified students met standards on the test — compared to a statewide average of 47%. But the district’s performance on the state English test has remained nearly flat from last year. The district improved its overall average reading score by less than half a point from last year. That “isn’t going to cut it to get us to our goal of 18 points in five years,” said Wendy Ranck-Buhr, the district’s equity executive director, during a school board meeting this month where officials discussed the district’s literacy scores. The district’s own internal literacy tests, the FastBridge and i-Ready, suggest that students overall are generally scoring at or above standard. But there are large gaps between students overall and so-called “spotlight” students, or the 15% to 20% of students at each school who are the furthest from meeting grade level. District officials said they are working on several things to improve performance, including using the so-called science of reading in more schools, convening meetings with teachers for professional development and planning, ensuring consistency in curriculum use across the district and deploying grant-funded literacy coaches at almost two dozen schools. They are also looking to Sequoia Elementary in Clairemont for solutions, as the majority low-income school has improved its scores in recent years. Principal Ryan Kissel said his teachers monitor students’ reading volume, meet monthly to analyze student data and plan lessons, use the district’s new reading curriculum consistently, provide small-group instruction and work to create a school culture of loving reading. Here are some of the notable trends in the district’s data: Literacy scores dip in middle school — and that trend is unique to San Diego Unified. Overall, San Diego Unified students on average score above grade level on English language arts state standardized tests in every grade level once they start taking the tests in third grade — until they hit middle school. San Diego Unified fifth-graders on average have scored 10 to 12 points above standard in the past three years. But sixth-graders have on average scored 8 points below, 3 points below and 3 points above standard in each of the past three years, respectively. Eighth-graders in all of the past three years scored multiple points below standard. The dips in middle school disproportionately affect Black and Latino students, Ranck-Buhr said. And the middle school dips are not on par with statewide trends, suggesting that something is going wrong specifically in San Diego Unified’s middle schools, officials said. “What’s going on elsewhere that we’re not seeing the trend?” board President Shana Hazan said. “It sounds like other folks have solved this problem better than we have.” District leaders are investigating potential reasons for the gaps, including inconsistencies across schools in implementing the district’s relatively new literacy curriculum and the way schools are configured — for example, whether having a K-8 model or a grades 6-8 model has an effect on performance. District administrators are working on a middle school redesign plan, interim Superintendent Fabiola Bagula said. Bagula said they plan to model some of that plan on Marston Middle in Clairemont, whose students on average score well above standard. Marston has ways to engage and motivate students, and fostering a sense of belonging will be part of the middle school strategy, Bagula said. Performance gaps persist among and within school clusters, even high-performing ones. School clusters in higher-income areas of the district such as La Jolla, Scripps Ranch and University City showed the highest average performance on the district’s own tests, while clusters in lower-income areas such as Crawford, Logan Memorial, Lincoln and Hoover showed the lowest. But even within the high-performing clusters, there are wide performance gaps between the overall average student performance and the average performance of spotlight students. In several cases, those gaps at overall high-performing clusters are wider than those at low-performing clusters For example, Scripps Ranch had the widest performance gap between its spotlight students’ average and overall average at 38 points. Clairemont, Mira Mesa and La Jolla had the next-widest gaps.   Achievement gaps start early for many young students. Some of the district’s data suggested that many children are starting school already behind grade level in reading. Across all the schools that took the i-Ready test this fall, 75% of kindergartners were already one grade level below in reading, the district’s data showed. “How is it possible that 75% of kinder in fall are a year behind? They’ve only just started,” school board Trustee Cody Petterson said. For first-graders who took the i-Ready, 69% were one grade level below, and 18% were two grade levels below. The data looked stronger for students who took the FastBridge test, and thousands more students took that test. About three-quarters of those kindergartners and 62% of those first-graders were considered at low risk for poor performance, compared to a quarter of kindergartners and 38% of first-graders who were at some or high risk. Bagula said she and her team have been working to address gaps in the few months since she began leading the district, including setting up school data dashboards and having staff called “academic partners” work with schools on best teaching practices, identifying students in need of support and planning instruction. “It really has been learning for us as well,” Bagula said.