18 More Students Named Merit Scholars

Foothill High School in the Tustin Unified School District added three more 1987 National Merit Scholars as the second round of awards were announced Wednesday by the National Merit Scholarship Corp. in Illinois.

Servite High, a Catholic school in Anaheim, and Newport Harbor High School in Newport Beach also had three winners each in the second round. Eighteen of the 163 second-round winners statewide are from Orange County.

Four Foothill High School students were named National Merit Scholars in the first round of awards announced April 8. A third and final round will be announced in two weeks, and Foothill High, at 19251 Dodge Ave. in an unincorporated area north of Tustin, is expected to have still more winners.

20 Finalists for School

Foothill High had 20 National Merit Scholarship finalists this year in its senior class--more than any other school in Orange County. (Finalists are students who make the last cut in the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. National Merit Scholars are chosen from the group of finalists.) Its senior class also has more honor students, both numerically and as a percentage of the class, than any previous senior class in the school’s history, according to assistant principal Dick Robbins.

Paradoxically, Foothill High’s senior class did not perform as well this year in the California Assessment Program (CAP) tests. The state tests are annual measures of student abilities.

Contrasted with last year’s senior class, this year’s seniors scored an average of .5% less in reading; 3.5% less in written expression; 3.9% less in spelling, and 3.7% less in math.

“We’re very proud of all our seniors, and we have a hard time accepting the CAP scores this year,” Robbins said. “I don’t think those scores reflect the class because we have more honor students in this class than ever before. I have my suppositions about why the scores were low, but I won’t discuss them because they’re just suppositions.”

Seniors May Not Have Tried Hard

Other officials in Tustin Unified, in interviews not for attribution, said they suspect that some Foothill High seniors deliberately did poorly on the CAP tests this year. “It may be because the kids are unhappy there are no longer cash awards by the state to senior classes showing improvements in CAP scores,” said one official. Another said that perhaps the seniors did not try hard on the tests because of lingering bitterness resulting from the teachers’ strike in the fall of 1985.

Some Foothill High students, like students in other Tustin Unified schools, boycotted classes to show their sympathy for the picketing teachers during that strike.

Each National Merit Scholar will receive $2,000 that can be utilized at any college the winner chooses.

One of the Orange County residents named in the second round of National Merit Scholar winners is Carolyn A. Bergman of Huntington Beach, who attended McKinley Senior High in Baton Rouge, La., when she qualified for the award.

The other 17 Orange County winners in the second round are:

- Foothill High, Tustin Unified--Ann J. Ryu, Eric D. Smith and Dan W. Turbow, all of Santa Ana.

- Servite High, Anaheim--Paul Farestveit, Brea; Matthew J. Verhalen, Capistrano Beach, and Andrew K. Shiau, Fullerton.

- Newport Harbor High, Newport-Mesa Unified--Norman Danner, Jeffrey S. Glueck and Kimberly A. Hoskins, all of Newport Beach.

- Corona del Mar High, Newport-Mesa Unified--Chai-Lin Hsu, Corona del Mar.

- Sunny Hills High, Fullerton Joint Union High School District--Willy S. Liao, Fullerton.

- Huntington Beach High, Huntington Beach Union High School District--Susan S. Wey, Huntington Beach.

- Laguna Hills High, Saddleback Valley Unified--Ram S. Duriseti, Laguna Hills.

- Trabuco Hills High, Saddleback Valley Unified--Jasmin N. Patel, Mission Viejo.

- El Dorado High, Placentia Unified--Sherrill L. Orr, Placentia.

- La Quinta High, Garden Grove Unified--Suzanne M. Boyce and Erik L. Russell, both of Westminster.