Tests Provide No Map in Hunt for Private Schools

Parents interested in private school education are asking for test scores to help them compare schools, but even though the scores exist, they’re coming up empty-handed.

And now that the Los Angeles Unified School District has decided to move to year-round schools, the demand for private education is increasing.

“Parents are panicking,” said Steve Bogad, headmaster of the Valley Beth Shalom Day School in Encino.

“I keep getting calls from parents asking how we rank schools,” said Mimi Baer, executive director of the California Assn. of Private Schools in Los Angeles. “Parents want objective criteria because it’s easier, I guess, than going out to many schools and really looking.”

But nearly all private schools refuse to release test scores. Why the hesitation? Can parents evaluate a school’s academic excellence by just looking?

Tests are just a snapshot of a school, not a video, said Baer, echoing the comments of many of the directors and principals at private schools in the San Fernando Valley. Tests can be flawed, skewed and deceiving, they say. Don’t focus on the scores; look instead at the total program the school provides.

But the California Achievement Program (CAP) scores for the state’s public schools are published annually, and many parents say they find those test results useful in understanding the student population at a given school. Even real estate agents track the public school scores and use them as potent bait in attracting prospective buyers to certain neighborhoods.

But just because parents--and real estate agents--are interested in school test scores doesn’t mean they are valid indicators of a school’s performance, said Margo Long, principal of the elementary campus of the Oakwood School in North Hollywood. Oakwood will not release its school’s Educational Records Bureau (ERB) standardized achievement test scores to the public, but does review each enrolled child’s score with parents.

The California Assn. of Private Schools requires member schools to administer achievement tests every two years, and many give them yearly.

“Our students outperform the national norm on the test,” Long said, “but here we treat the test as just another factor.” Long said prospective parents frequently ask about test scores, and she tells them the scores depend on the individual child.

“I don’t know of any independent school that releases a norm test score statistic to parents,” she said.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles doesn’t release its schools’ test scores either. According to Sister Claire Patrice Fitzgerald, elementary school supervisor, the archdiocese uses the Stanford Achievement Test annually to evaluate students in grades one through seven, with optional testing in the eighth grade.

“Our purpose in testing is to evaluate individual progress annually,” Sister Claire Patrice said, “and besides, the populations differ and change very quickly within a school.” She said the archdiocese’s schools rank, on average, in the 50th percentile or higher. She said she understands why parents want to know the schools’ test scores: “It’s the only measurable thing they have and, of course, they want the school environment to be challenging.”

Valley Beth Shalom Day School, like other members of the California Assn. of Independent Schools, gives the ERB achievement test. Headmaster Bogad said he often has to explain to parents why they cannot compare his school’s scores to the public schools’ CAP tests, to the California Test of Basic Skills (CTBS) or to scores from other private schools.

While Bogad refuses to say how well his school does on the ERB and does not give this information to prospective parents, he said the school sends home each child’s test results and discusses them in detail with the child’s parents. Because the school only admits children it considers average or above, he said, his students “would top out the CTBS. The ERB has a higher top than the CTBS.” The ERB is a more sensitive measure of students performing at the higher end of the spectrum, he said.

Officials of the California Assn. of Independent Schools said the association does not recommend that schools refuse to release school test score information.

It’s not educationally sound to release the scores because it puts too much emphasis on the tests, Bogad said.

“A child takes a test on one particular day,” he said. “In elementary schools, placing a lot of emphasis on test scores is the wrong thing to do; it’s misleading.”

Another reason many independent schools don’t release their test scores, Bogad said, is that “we don’t want parents choosing our schools based on test scores. We want people to choose us, to embrace us, based on our distinct philosophies. We want parents at our school who believe in what our school stands for.”

The Valley Beth Shalom Day School’s test scores, said Bogad, are lower than some other independent schools in the community.

He said his scores will be significantly lower than the Buckley School’s in Sherman Oaks because Valley Beth Shalom accepts a more diverse student body. “But,” he said, “my parents know this. My board knows this.”

Long said many independent schools use test scores as criteria for admission, creating from the start a student body that will tend to score well on the same sort of tests that got them into the school in the first place. And, she said, some children as young as 4 or 5 squeal with delight as they take an admission exam, thrilled that they know the answers because they’ve taken the same test before, sometimes several times.

“They are test-wise at 4,” she said.

Yet Jim Ferrell, professor of educational psychology at Cal State Northridge, said he doesn’t think that disclosing a school’s test results is a bad idea.

“They are a general indicator of how all the children in the school are performing against a norm, and such test scores are helpful,” he said.

He added that test scores need to be looked at in addition to other information about a school, such as the campus climate, outside programs and extracurricular activities.

Parents interested in a school’s academic standing, said Long, should look at the percentage of its graduates who go onto college. “At most independent schools, it’s 99%,” she said, “as compared to a public school where you’re lucky if it reaches 33%.”

She also suggests that parents evaluate a school’s reputation in the community.

Ferrell said that assuming a test is administered in the standard fashion and that none of the students have been coached, it is valid. Validity, which assesses how closely a child’s test performance compares with his or her classroom achievement as measured by grades, varies somewhat between tests. The best tests, he said, measure about one-third of whatever is being taught by a school.

“So there is an awful lot of information that can’t be reflected in the tests,” he said.

He also warned that tests like the ERB, which is compared to a national norm, have to be far more general than state tests because they will be taken by children all across the country.

Bogad said he uses the ERB test to make decisions about the school’s curriculum.

“If we, let’s say, get low test scores in fractions, we can decide whether we will put up with that because we know we’ll be teaching that material next year, in the next grade, or we will change the curriculum,” he said. “But we don’t let the tests dictate what we’ll teach.”

But as schools--from preschool to college--become increasingly competitive, educators say it’s only natural that parents are interested in the hard data as they make tough and costly choices about where to send their children. Some parents say they’re just curious. Others think the information is more critical to their choice of schools.

“We’re not trying to hoodwink anybody,” said Bogad. “We want an informed populace making decisions based on reality.”

THE RIGHT SCHOOL

Parents investigating private schools should consider the following tips:

* Ask about the school’s philosophy and make sure it fits with your own.

* Find out--if you can--how the students typically score on the achievement test used by the school, i.e. 50th percentile, 90th percentile.

* Ask which secondary schools or colleges the school’s graduates attend.

* Visit the school and assess the campus climate, the relationship between students and teachers, the student-teacher ratio and the value placed upon parent involvement in school programs and decision-making.

* Assess the number and availability of extracurricular activities at the school, such as music, drama and sports.