CAP Scores Cover Wide Range in Two Counties

High school seniors in Los Angeles and Ventura counties scored among the highest--and the lowest--in the state on the 1987-88 California Assessment Program test in reading and mathematics.

Although schools in Agoura, Calabasas, Cerritos, San Marino, Palos Verdes Estates, Rolling Hills Estates and South Pasadena were among the best performers statewide, schools in Compton, Inglewood and Pomona were among the weakest.

As a group, the 25,000 seniors in the Los Angeles Unified School District who took the test performed below the statewide average of 250 for both reading and math. Los Angeles school district seniors averaged 202 in reading and 208 in math, but scores for individual schools in the district varied widely. Seniors at El Camino Real in Woodland Hills had the best marks in the district: 264 in reading and 284 in math.

Although parents and real estate agents often regard CAP scores as the ultimate test of a good school, Sacramento released the results of the 1987-88 test for seniors with the official caveat that CAP scores are not the sole measure of a school’s success.

Pat McCabe, the state Department of Education’s consultant on CAP, emphasized that the scores offer just one indicator of a school’s or district’s educational quality.

Lynn Winters of the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District said the CAP test is important to the district because it matters to the state. The state Department of Education typically looks at CAP scores, among other measures, when choosing distinguished schools and distributing other honors. “It’s less important,” Winters said, “in terms of telling us how to improve our programs because there’s not enough descriptive information that emerges from it.”

Winters said the 1987-88 test, which was more difficult than earlier versions, was a marked improvement. “When you look at the items, you think, ‘These are things that students ought to know,’ instead of thinking, ‘This is silly or irrelevant.’ ”

Winters is director of program evaluation for the South Bay school district, a consistent top performer on the test.

An official of the Los Angeles school district, second-largest in the nation, said the CAP test lets the district know how well its curriculum meshes with state guidelines.

“The utility of CAP, as I see it, is that it gives us a way to see if our students are mastering the concepts that are considered critical for all California students to learn,” said Linda Pursell, assistant director of research and evaluation for the district.

Pursell said she was not surprised that Los Angeles Unified students scored slightly higher in math than in reading. “That’s a very consistent pattern in our district because we have a very large percentage of students who come to the district not speaking English,” she said.

She noted that for 39% of the Los Angeles Unified School District seniors tested, English is not the first language.

A separate battery of California Assessment Program tests is given to students in three elementary grades in late spring, and the scores are reported in the fall.