State Report Card : 29 County High Schools Shy of Goal

Only 26 of 55 public high schools in Orange County met a state goal to improve reading and mathematics levels over the past two years, state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig said Thursday.

Nineteen high schools met the goal in one area but not the other, and 10 high schools met neither goal, Honig said.

At a Sacramento press conference, Honig unveiled the comparisons of California Assessment Program (CAP) reading and math scores among high school seniors over the past two years.

The statewide goal was for high schools either to increase CAP reading and math scores by .5% during the two-year period or to be in the top 25% in scores for those subjects among schools in their socio-economic bracket.

Tough Questions

While the scores had been previously released, the “report card” that Honig issued Thursday was designed to show whether individual schools were improving or falling behind.

“The time has come to recognize schools which are meeting Californians’ expectations and ask some tough questions of the ones which aren’t,” Honig said.

In Orange County, however, officials of some of the schools failing to meet the improvement goals criticized Honig, saying the two-year goal doesn’t allow for the fact that one senior class is tested the first year and a different class the second year. One Orange County school superintendent, who asked not to be identified, said “Honig is going too far on this testing business.”

Statewide, 46.6%, or 349 of the state’s 749 high schools, met the two-year improvement goal in both reading and math. In Orange County, the 26 high schools meeting the two goals represented 47.3% of the county’s 55 high schools.

The 10 Orange County high schools that didn’t meet either reading or math improvement goals are mainly in middle-class or upper-middle-class areas of the county. They were Costa Mesa High and Estancia High (in Costa Mesa), both in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District; San Clemente High in the Capistrano Unified School District; Brea-Olinda High in Brea-Olinda Unified; Anaheim High and Loara High (Anaheim), both of the Anaheim Union High School District; Buena Park High and La Habra High, in the Fullerton Joint Union High School District; Pacifica High in Garden Grove Unified, and Saddleback High in Santa Ana Unified.

Jerome Thornsley, superintendent of Capistrano Unified, criticized the new Honig report on schools as being “superficial.” He said the annual scores reflect a new crop of seniors each year at the various high schools. “There is normal variation from one year to another,” Thornsley said. He added that he was not overly concerned about San Clemente High’s scores. “I’m not very alarmed or excited,” he said.

‘Changing Demographics’

John Nicoll, superintendent of Newport-Mesa Unified, which includes Estancia and Costa Mesa high schools, said, “Bill Honig called me and wanted to know what was wrong with those schools, and I told him, ‘changing demographics.’ We have many Southeast Asians coming into Costa Mesa High now and many Hispanics entering Estancia. There is a language problem, and the tests are given in English.”

Ed Dundon, superintendent of Garden Grove Unified, noted that five of the seven high schools in his district met the state goals, one high school met part of the goals, and only Pacifica High did not meet either.

Brea-Olinda Unified School District Supt. Edgar Seal said Brea-Olinda High for years has had some of the best CAP scores in Orange County. “Then we had a (senior) class that does well but just doesn’t score well on tests,” Seal said. “We had a down year, a very minor down, I might say.”

Seal said the high school will be analyzing the test results. If specific weaknesses in a subject area are found, “we’ll be taking steps to correct it,” he said.

Honig was reelected to a second term as the state’s highest education offical on June 3 with 78% of the vote. Honig has said that Californians will not push the Legislature for more education money unless they are getting proof that schools are trying to improve.

‘A Danger Symptom’

“The people of California have spoken clearly,” Honig said. “They want a better education for our young people. Good test scores are only part of what makes good schools, but poor or declining test scores are a danger symptom of lack of learning. The schools which are declining simply are not delivering, and the time to focus attention on them is here.”

Honig said a similar report on high schools will be issued in 1988. In the next two years, Honig said, high schools will be expected to show a full percentage point improvement in their reading and math scores.

The score results released by Honig on Thursday put schools in five major categories. At the top was Category 1A, the “super-category”: high schools that improved CAP reading and math scores by at least 1%--double the state goal--and had a CAP reading and math scores in the top 25% of comparable schools statewide.

Orange County had eight schools in the 1A category: Sunny Hills High, Fullerton; Bolsa Grande High, Garden Grove; Garden Grove High; Santiago High, Garden Grove; Villa Park High; Valencia High, Placentia; El Toro High, and Los Alamitos High.