Fresno Unified’s Misty Her must win this challenge: Improving student test scores | Opinion

Misty Her, welcome to the helm of California’s third-largest school district!

Now, the hard work starts for the new superintendent of the Fresno Unified School District as it faces declining enrollment, a budget deficit and bottom-of-the-barrel student test scores.

After the board voted 6-1 to remove the interim label from her title, Her had a message for the 71,480 students whose successes will depend on her ability to navigate the district.

“You are my life. You are in my heart. Your dreams, your potential, your futures are worth fighting for,” said Her, the daughter of Hmong immigrants who worked as janitors in the school district she now leads. “You are brilliant. You are powerful. And, you are full of promise. Don’t ever forget that.”

The biggest gift that Her — and the school board — can deliver to a diverse enrollment is to help students improve proficiency in literacy and math.

It will be a daunting challenge. The 2024 state average for meeting math standards is 35.54%. Four of the district’s seven comprehensive high schools have single-digit test scores, with Roosevelt High barely above that mark at 10.02%. There were slight improvements from 2023.

Fresno Unified student scores have not rebounded to the level they were prior to the pandemic. Additionally, there is an evident racial divide. Only 13.21% of the district’s Black students met or exceeded math standards, compared with 23.42% for Latinos, 31.84% for Asians and 39.66% for whites. The state average is 37.1% for math and 47% for English.

Those are gloomy stats in a district where Latinos account for 69.5% of the enrollment, trailed by Asians (10.6%), whites (7.8%), and Blacks (7.6%).

To be fair, Fresno Unified is not alone in dealing with underachieving test scores. It’s a problem that plagues the state. California student test scores have seen post-pandemic declines in both math and reading, and they trail pre-pandemic levels.

Fresno Unified has a plan

The positive is that Fresno Unified, which one trustee said has “hundreds of programs” trying to address student test scores, has begun to address the problem.

In January, trustees approved an ambitious five-year plan to nearly double the district’s early literacy rates (from 48% to 80% for first graders) and made that a priority for the new superintendent.

“We’ll be able to tell the superintendent coming in, ‘This is what our community expects of us, so if it’s not something you can deliver, then we don’t want you here.’ It focuses us to get the right person for the job,” said school board President Valerie Davis.

The district has identified four goals for all students: attendance/preparedness, academic excellence, extracurricular activities and character/workplace skills.

Davis, who has served as a trustee since 2004, was among the six trustees who endorsed Her last week.

“We are confident, and we are excited because we know we have selected the most qualified, experienced, visionary leader to take Fresno Unified to the next era,” said Davis. “We’re launching a new chapter in Fresno Unified, one rooted in optimism.”

To get to that chapter, trustees have determined to make major improvements by 2030:

▪ Increase the rate of first-graders proficient in literacy from 48%, as of June 2024, to 80%.

▪ Grow the number of elementary and middle-school students with underachieving reading test scores who demonstrate more than one year’s growth in standardized testing.

▪ Raise the percentage of students graduating from high school who are considered “college and career ready,” from 43% to 64%.

“The goals and guardrails came from the community,” Her told The Fresno Bee. “I think they’re very ambitious goals.”

It will be up to Her, the trustees, the district’s 10,000 employees and the community to deliver. Failure will not be an option.

This story was originally published April 29, 2025 at 5:30 AM.