Maria Lopez is a spokeswoman for the Sacramento City School District. She says the district increased its overall academic performance index…or API…by 15-points. But she says they still need to work on closing the achievement gap…between students who are white or Asian and their peers who are African American and Hispanic. 

"What we’re seeing is that while all of our student groups are increasing, that distance between the lower performing groups and our higher performing groups has not narrowed yet. So everyone is rising but the gap between them has not closed." 

Lopez says several schools did very well in their API growth including Theodore Judah and Rosa Parks Middle schools.

Statewide…about 53% of California schools met the API growth targets, an increase of 8 percentage points over last year.