The first results of a new test on student performance in California schools revealed a majority of students failed to meet state standards in math and English — with a stark racial achievement gap despite decades of efforts to close it.

Of more than 3.1 million public school students tested in English statewide, only 44 percent met or exceeded standards; in math, only 33 percent met that threshold, according to the state Department of Education, which released the new scores. Scores at Bay Area schools generally mirrored the statewide results, as performance correlated with family and community wealth, language ability and ethnicity.

For Californians accustomed to optimistic reports of steadily improving public school performance, Wednesday’s discouraging numbers provided a sober picture of how the state is meeting its new education standards.

“The alarm bells should be going off all over,” said Matt Hammer, who leads a nonprofit education advocacy and school incubation group, Innovate Public Schools, in San Jose. “What’s going to happen to children who aren’t doing math at grade level?”

While 72 percent of Asian students and 61 percent of white students statewide met or exceeded standards in English, only 32 percent of Latino students and 28 percent of African-American students matched that achievement.

In math, scores were lower and the gaps wider: 69 percent of Asians, 49 percent of whites, 21 percent of Latinos and 16 percent of African-Americans met or exceeded standards.

Among students from low-income families, scores also lagged. Only 31 percent met or exceeded standards in English, and 21 percent did so in math.

The new computerized test, which is based on the Common Core State Standards that have been adopted across the nation, paints a darker picture than California’s previous measuring stick, the STAR tests, which were paper-and-pencil exams that were suspended in 2013. In the last year of the STAR tests, more than half of all students met the math standards and just over 56 percent met English standards. In addition, the achievement gap appeared to be narrowing over time.

Education officials, however, stressed that scores from the inaugural year of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium form a baseline for future measurement, and no conclusions can be drawn from comparing them to STAR results.

“It’s unreliable to try to make any comparison,” said Tom Torlakson, state superintendent of public instruction. “It’s apples to watermelons.”

The scores reflect California’s ambitious foray into online testing to assess how well students have mastered a new and more challenging curriculum. By and large, Californians have embraced Common Core, avoiding the political maelstrom that in other states has enveloped the revised content and new ways of teaching. Less than 1 percent of eligible California students skipped last spring’s tests at the request parents.

California has about 6.2 million public school children, but not all took the new standardized tests. The state administered the English and math sections to students in grades three through eight, and also to 11th-graders — as required by the federal No Child Left Behind law.

In science, students still took the paper-and-pencil tests similar to previous years, and their scores, released Wednesday, declined statewide by 4 percentage points. The drop was across the board in grades tested, with 55 percent of fifth-graders, 64 percent of eighth-graders and 53 percent of 10th-graders scoring proficient or above.

In all subjects, the difference in achievement between Asian and white students on one hand and African-American and Latino students on the other — with groups like Filipino and students of two races falling in the middle — has continued to challenge and even stymie educators.

The gap crops up in schools serving wealthy and poor communities, although some have managed to make some inroads. In largely affluent San Mateo County, only 23 percent of Latinos met or exceeded math standards, just 2 percentage points above Latinos statewide. In Santa Clara County, where Latinos historically have scored lower than their counterparts statewide, scores were higher than statewide scores for all ethnic groups except Filipinos.

But schools and districts do show varying results. In largely Latino Ravenswood elementary in East Palo Alto, just 18 percent of students met or exceeded English standards and 12 percent exceeded standards in math. The Mount Diablo Unified School District in Contra Costa County scored higher overall than students statewide, but its Latino students, who make up 41 percent of campuses, scored lower than did Latinos across California. Only 19 percent of district Latinos met standards in math.

The numbers were equally dismal in Oakland Unified, where those meeting standards made up only 29 percent in English and 23 percent in math. For African-Americans in the district, the percentages were just 16 percent in English and 9 percent in math.

How could that be, when 2013 test results showed 34 percent of African-American proficient in English and 31 percent proficient in math?

The answer most educators give is: The bar has been set higher.

The district will continue to focus on writing, small-group instruction and science-technology-engineering-math courses, Wilson said.

In San Jose Unified, which showed similar large ethnic achievement gaps despite years of efforts to close them, Assistant Superintendent Jason Willis noted that a lack of facility with language has hampered some students, with Common Core’s emphasis on students explaining their thinking and, even in math, how they reached their answers. Many of San Jose Unified’s students have learned English as a second language.

“That emphasis on language is really important thing we need to pay attention to,” Willis said.

But critics of state testing insist the new tests are unproven and unfair to English learners. Roxana Marachi, a San Jose State associate professor of education, wrote to the state board of education that “invalid tests are being falsely promoted as accurate measures of ‘college and career readiness.’ ”

However, district officials are taking the tests as their marching orders.

“The numbers reinforce what we thought to be true,” Oakland Superintendent Antwan Wilson said. “We have significant work to do to ensure our students are on a trajectory to master more rigorous studies.”

Contact Sharon Noguchi at 408-271-3775. Follow her at Twitter.com/noguchionk12.