It’s ‘Report Card’ Time for State’s High Schools : Statistics: Annual performance reports rank schools in a variety of categories in an effort to assess educational quality.

Public school administrators throughout Orange County greeted the state’s recently released performance report on high schools with a mixture of curiosity, confusion and a great deal of caution.

The extensive reports closely examine everything from students’ scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test to dropout rates, other test scores and enrollment in college preparatory classes. These and other so-called “quality indicators” are part of state education officials’ efforts to improve performance and accountability at individual high schools.

But there’s a problem, some experts say.

“This thing is so voluminous that it’s going to take a while before we really know what it means,” Jim Cox, director of research and evaluation at Anaheim Union School District, said of the California Performance Report, released last week by the state Department of Education. “Sometimes it loses its impact because it is so in-depth.”

Still, even a superficial glance at the data shows one thing very clearly: the huge inequities in academic performance between schools whose students are from wealthy families and schools whose students are from poor or immigrant families.

Comparisons of those disparities have made many administrators uneasy about the reports, which also include data on high school graduates who go on to public universities, extracurricular activities, students’ ethnic backgrounds, teachers’ backgrounds and parents’ educational levels.

“It’s important that you compare apples to apples,” said John W. Nicoll, superintendent of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, whose schools get high marks in the report. “If you don’t compare schools with the same socioeconomic (factors), it’s not fair.”

The reports contain data ranking schools’ scores among those of others in the state with similar demographics.

“I’m gratified that we did well, but we have high socioeconomic levels,” Nicoll said. “We expect a lot out of our kids.”

On the other end of the spectrum are schools such as Santiago High in Garden Grove, which has a large percentage of students with limited English skills. There, the data traditionally show performances below the overall state averages.

Lois Blackmore, coordinator of data analysis for the Garden Grove Unified School District, said the report is “not meant to be used for comparing schools against all others across the state.” Rather, she said, its main purpose is to serve as a guide to help a school examine its goals and curriculum.

“Broad comparisons are tempting, but they don’t reflect the facts,” Blackmore said.

But comparisons are made nonetheless.

“I know it’s not fair, but there’s no denying that you look at how other schools did. Everyone does,” said Bruce Givner, deputy superintendent in charge of support services at the Irvine Unified School District.

“In general, we feel very positive about the results,” Givner said.

Irvine’s three high schools ranked in the 90th percentile in many categories, in both overall state and relative comparisons.

The report indicates that throughout the state, there are more students enrolled in college preparatory courses and advanced classes for college credit than there were in 1983, when the first such annual performance report was issued.

While administrators at schools such as Newport Harbor, Woodbridge, University and Sunny Hills concentrated on getting more students enrolled in college preparatory courses, those at schools such as Santiago and Valley High in Santa Ana were struggling to keep students in class. Those two schools had cumulative three-year dropout rates of 25.4% and 24.9% respectively.

William Rukeyser, a spokesman for the California Department of Education, said the report is the most comprehensive evaluation of schools in the nation and that it does a very good job of “shining the light on the schools that are performing well and those that aren’t.”

The “report card is like the Yellow Pages,” he said. “You don’t read it for fun, but it provides you with a lot of good information.”

As for the data itself, Rukeyser cautioned, “What should be looked at is how good a school does with what it has.”

A school such as Santa Ana High, for example, which had the county’s lowest average SAT score in math--439--ranked in the 20th percentile in that category among all schools in the state. Ranked among schools with similar socioeconomic characteristics, though, Santa Ana is in the 64th percentile.

Cox of the Anaheim district said he hopes undue emphasis will not be placed on the performance summaries. He said he fears that some schools may be tempted to “pursue all of the quality indicators and kill some other elective programs that should be part of the curriculum.”

Despite their concerns over how the data may be interpreted, most administrators said they welcome the information, which they said will be used to help them identify areas of weakness.

“We’re very pleased with the direction the state is going and with these reports,” said Vergil Hettick, director of research and evaluation for the Santa Ana Unified School District, where scores were not impressive.

“They don’t discourage me,” Hettick said of the scores. “Our sole objective is to get better and better. And to the degree that the report helps us focus in on certain goals, it definitely has merit.”