CAP Scores Rise Again for 12th-Graders : Education: The statewide results show steady improvement since 1984. But gains are slight for some minority and immigrant students.

This year’s high school seniors in California scored higher than the class of 1989 in both reading and math, and students from every ethnic group and even those who speak little English registered gains on the annual California Assessment Program tests.

The test results, released Tuesday, added to the generally steady improvement statewide in the 12th-grade test scores over the last six years. The class of 1990 topped its 1984 counterpart by 15 points in reading and by 26 points in math, on a scale ranging from 100 to about 400.

But while the statewide average showed a one-year growth of three points in reading and four in math, some individual districts and schools did not fare so well. And, overall, minorities and students with limited English skills, although making progress, still lag far behind Anglos and native English-speakers in reading. Only Asians outscore Anglos in math.

Although the massive Los Angeles Unified School District showed some improvement with scores of 197 in reading and 214 in math, its seniors remained well below the state averages of 251 and 260, respectively.

And scores tumbled in some districts--including Northern California’s Richmond, where schools were redesigned in a highly touted program allowing parents to choose among campuses. The Calexico Unified School District in Imperial County slid, as did several districts in fast-growing San Bernardino County.

“Something is just not clicking in some of these districts,” Bill Honig, state superintendent of public instruction, acknowledged.

But at an upbeat news conference at Nogales High School in La Puente Tuesday, Honig said the majority of California schools are making sound, significant improvements.

“It’s a different educational program that we’re seeing now than we saw six years ago,” Honig said, noting that the gains came in the face of a tougher test and a more demanding curriculum. “It’s much more sophisticated. There’s been a change in curriculum and a change in what we do.”

The improvements came despite a doubling in the last decade of the numbers of children living in poverty and of those who speak little or no English.

While acknowledging that California schools “still have a long, long way to go,” Honig said this year’s 12th-grade tests showed that “the schools can perform, are performing and will perform in the next 10 years, and we will get a first-class school system that our kids deserve.”

An expert in testing and evaluation agreed that the CAP scores showed schools are making progress but not equally for all groups of students.

“The results seems to show that (the state’s educational) reforms are having effects and that they have the potential to have effects anywhere and everywhere,” said Leigh Burstein, a UCLA professor and a faculty associate in the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing.

But it is unclear from the results whether some of the growth may have come because the less able students dropped out, Burstein said. And the gaps between minorities’ scores and those of Anglos indicate that “the strongest gains are among those who have always done well, so we haven’t solved our problems of making sure there are equal gains for all walks of life, for all ethnic groups,” he added.

Blacks, for example, scored, on average, 200 in reading for a two-year gain of one point, while whites scored 293, up eight points during the same period. Latino students scored 202 in reading, up one point in two years.

In the Los Angeles district, where 10% of the seniors tested had limited fluency in English, officials said they had not yet had a chance to thoroughly evaluate the scores but were encouraged by gains at some of the high schools.

Dan Isaacs, assistant superintendent in charge of the district’s high schools division, said 33 of its 49 comprehensive high schools had improved reading scores and 36 improved in math, “so there are some optimistic notes.”

Saying that “last year was an atypical year in the district” because of a teachers strike, Isaacs said he expects that the newly begun restructuring of schools to give more authority to campus staff and parents will result in bigger gains in the future.

Honig said there “is usually a common sense answer” as to why students in some districts don’t do well in the tests. He suggested Los Angeles may have suffered from the atmosphere of tension between the teachers’ union and administrators, in addition to facing problems with the district’s size and large numbers of students who speak limited English.

“To be successful on these tests, you have to have everybody focused and working together . . . lots of the ingredients for success were not there,” Honig said.

But the state superintendent focused on the positive, releasing the statewide CAP scores at Nogales High in tribute to the school’s success in bringing up the performance levels of its ethnically diverse students.

In six years, come-from-behind Nogales brought its 12th-grade reading scores up 74 points to 255--above the state average. Its math scores, while at 225 are still below average, rose 43 points in the same period.

“Anything over 30 points is amazing,” Honig told a crowd of beaming students, teachers and parents. “You should be very, very proud.”

CAP SCORES: B4