Chatsworth Gets Good ‘Report Card’ Overall

As the students and faculty of Chatsworth eased into their chairs after the morning flag salute, a young voice crackled over the public address system with the announcement that “the word of the day is exorbitant--an adjective which means excessive, extravagant or immoderate.”

“That’s another part of our program, to make sure that improvement of language usage is a part of every day,” Donna Smith, principal of the West Valley high school, said with an easy smile. “In some classes teachers write the word of the day on the board and try to make sure that they use the word during each class period.”

Innovative teaching techniques are not new at Chatsworth High. It is a public school that tries to offer programs for a variety of interests. Students range from the college-bound girl who enrolled in a History of Ancient Civilization course because she wanted to be “well-rounded” to the restless youth who chafed under the academic regimen but blossomed in the school’s vocational catering-service program.

Simply put, Chatsworth High is a school that works.

To be sure, Chatsworth is not the best high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. There are other schools whose students score higher on standardized tests, where a greater number of students take advanced and college-level courses and where a greater percentage go to college.

And Chatsworth--like most public and private schools--has to battle absenteeism, drug abuse and adolescent ennui.

But the state’s first Performance Report for California Schools--the so-called “school report cards” issued by the the state superintendent of schools--showed that Chatsworth was one of the few Los Angeles high schools to consistently score at or above the state average.

For example:

A higher percentage of Chats-worth seniors take advanced mathematics courses than at the average state high school. A higher percentage also take three or more years of a foreign language and pass Advanced Placement tests, which give students college credit before they start their freshman year.

Chatsworth students scored above the state average in math skills on the Scholastic Aptitude Test and the California Assessment Program test. They scored slightly below the state average in reading and verbal skills.

Chatsworth students who entered UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara and UC Santa Cruz had higher average grades than the entering class as a whole, according to records of the University of California system for the fall of 1982.

More Chatsworth graduates completed the first year of college than their classmates at those four UC campuses and they had a higher grade-point average, the records show.

“We know that we do fine in academic areas and it is wonderful that the state report card reflects our accomplishments,” said Principal Smith. “But all of this is not to say that we can’t do better. We can do better and we are always working to make this a better school.”

This is the first year that the public schools have received report cards on their performance. The publication of such statistics is part of the program promised by state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig to make schools more accountable for the education of their students.

The first reports measure enrollment in academic courses, performance on standardized tests and the performance of graduates at the University of California and the California State University systems. In the future, the annual reports will also include the types of extracurricular activities students participate in, the amount of writing and homework assigned, and drop-out and attendance rates.

‘Quite Positive’

“My attitude is that these quality indicators are quite positive,” said Paul M. Possemato, the assistant Los Angeles school district superintendent in charge of the high school division. “Not only do I think that we can live with the reports, I think we will prosper with them.

“Once parents understand how to use the quality indicators,” he said, report cards “will become an asset in helping parents develop a partnership with their schools.”

But there are some who do not think the reports help the public gain more insight.

“I think there is a real downside,” said Esther Goldberg, director of education for the 31st District Parent Teachers Students Assn., which covers the San Fernando Valley. “Parents use them, unfortunately, to compare one school against another. That cannot be done because each school is unique with a different student composition and a different set of problems.

“The question is, how can you truly evaluate a school?” Goldberg said. “Is the number of students who take algebra an indication of the quality of education? Honig thinks so; I don’t. I think you can only compare a school to itself and what it is doing this year compared to what it was doing last year.”

Report Cards ‘Terrible’

An education consultant who asked to remain anonymous because of his work with the Los Angeles school district called the report cards “terrible.”

“To think we can squeeze down a school into qualitative indicators is ridiculous. The indicators are more a reflection of what’s going on in the community that school serves than what is going on in the school.

“It is known as the ‘Jaguar Effect.’ If the school is in a rich community and parents pick their children up in Jaguars, then the results of standardized tests are apt to be high. If the school is in a poorer community, the test results are apt to be low.”

How the public interprets the school report card is important to Principal Smith. In the upcoming weeks, she says, she will discuss the report card results with the school’s PTA, its Advisory Council and community organizations such as the Rotary Club and the Chats-worth Women’s Club.

“This type of information is important to the public. For many, it is the only means to gauge the performance of a school,” said Smith, who met with the Chats-worth faculty and staff last week to discuss the results.

“Many times during the summer people about to move into the area will stop by the school and ask about our test scores, our college placement and course offerings as a way of finding out about the school.”

Quiet Residential Area

Chatsworth High is nestled in a quiet residential area south of the intersection of Devonshire Street and De Soto Avenue. More than 2,800 students roam the spacious 37-acre campus--one of the few schools in the Los Angeles district that is not surrounded by a fence.

About 68% of the student body is white. Student participants in the district’s voluntary desegregation program--most of them black--make up 14% of Chatsworth’s enrollment. More Asians are moving into the neighborhood surrounding the school and, as a result, the number of students who need classes in English as a second language has increased.

Since it opened in 1963, Chats-worth has cultivated an atmosphere that tilted to the academic side. When Proposition 13 budget cuts, for instance, forced the Los Angeles school board to eliminate the one-semester fine arts requirement for graduation, Chatsworth retained it.

And while many public schools are preparing now to install their first personal computers, Chats-worth has two classrooms of computers and is preparing to add a third this year. Smith said that one of the school’s goals is to make sure that all graduates have “hands-on experience” with microprocessors by the time they graduate.

Chatsworth offers its students electives ranging from California history to modern literature. Teachers complain that past budget cuts have left only one Latin American history class and eliminated other electives, but the course offerings at Chatsworth are expansive compared to those at many schools.

Occupational Direction

But some students are not academically directed, and Chats-worth has established a broad program that tries to meet their needs too.

The school, in partnership with Northridge Hospital Medical Center, has established a hospital occupation program. Students interested in careers in the health-care industry spend two days in classes and three days on the job at the hospital.

There is a day-care center on the campus where students interested in early childhood education and child care can gain experience working and teaching toddlers. The program is so popular with parents living near the school that there is a waiting list to enroll children in it.

There is also a catering-service program for students interested in setting up their own restaurant or other food operation. Students can learn everything from kitchen procedures to accounting.

“With all the programs for gifted students and motivated students and programs for special education students and students who speak little English, we have to make sure that there are plenty of programs that stimulate the average student,” Smith said. “We can’t forget the average kid.”

Chatsworth has plenty of extracurricular activity too. The football team went to the city quarterfinals last year, the academic decathlon team finished third in citywide competition and the mock-trial team recently won a match that allows it to represent Los Angeles County in state competition.