The "San Fernando Valley K-12 Annual Report," issued by the San Fernando Valley Economic Research Center in CSUN's College of Business and Economics, examines enrollment and Academic Performance Index (API) data for schools in the Las Virgenes, Glendale and Burbank school districts as well as Districts 1 and 2 of the Los Angeles Unified School District. District 1 includes the west San Fernando Valley while District 2 covers the east San Fernando Valley.

CSUN researchers found that the Valley school districts all improved their API scores in the academic year 2007-2008, with the Glendale and Las Virgenes districts maintaining API scores in excess of 800. California has set an API score target of 800 for all public schools in the state.

"Just behind Las Virgenes and Glendale, the Burbank district is closing in on an 800 API with its 2007-2008 score of 788 and LAUSD District 1 is not far behind with its last year's API score of 746," said center director Daniel Blake. He added that LAUSD District 2 also continued to improve by boosting its score to 679.

"All of the Valley's public school districts bested the LAUSD API average scores of 655," Blake said. "Moreover, four out of the five Valley districts-LAUSD District 1, Burbank, Glendale and Las Virgenes-scored better than the average APIs for Los Angeles County public schools and California public schools last year."

The improvement comes in the face of continued school enrollment drops in the Valley, which saw area schools posting a 1.2 enrollment loss in 2007-2008 relative to 2006-2007 levels. However, the rate of enrollment decrease slowed considerably from those recorded in 2005-2006, which saw a 3.5 percent drop, and 2006-2007, which saw a 3.7 percent drop.

Blake said private schools in the area suffered the largest slide, losing 6.5 percent of their enrollment in the 2007-2008 year, while the Valley's LAUSD enrollment held up best with only a 0.1 percent decrease relative to last year. Burbank, Las Virgenes and Glendale losses fell in between, with enrollment losses of 0.7 percent, 1.1 percent and 1.4 percent respectively.

"The enrollment decrease in the Valley stems from a population bulge from the children of the baby boom generation that has been moving through the schools," Blake said. "The population bulge has been working its way through the K-12 student population and is now in high school."

Accompanying this bulge has been a subtle shift in the school demographics across the state.

"The proportion of non-Hispanic, white students is declining everywhere, but at a much slower rate in the Valley and LAUSD than in Los Angeles County and California," Blake said, adding that the proportion of African-American students is declining in all areas.

"And though the proportions of Asian and Hispanic K-12 students are rising, the actual numbers of both Asian and Hispanic students enrolled in Valley public schools are falling," he said. "This seeming anomaly results because of the effects of the overall decreases in student enrollment overwhelm the effects of rising percentage enrollments in both groups."

A copy of the full report is available at the center's Web site, http://www.csun.edu/sfverc/.

The San Fernando Valley Economic Research Center collects, assembles, analyzes and disseminates economic, social and demographic information of the San Fernando Valley and related areas. The center was established in 1997 and quickly became a widely respected expert source for information and perspective on the economy and demographics of the San Fernando Valley.