Culver City High’s Write Stuff : Tests: The senior class finished above statewide and L.A. county averages in CAP writing scores.

Breakfast, a pep talk--oh, and more assignments--can make all the difference, the Culver City school district has found.

The seniors who graduated from Culver City High School last month scored 286 on the California Assessment Program’s writing test, 66 points higher than the class of 1989. The also placed well above the statewide average of 256 points and the Los Angeles County average of 233, the test results released today showed.

“We expected that,” said Vera Jashni, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction in the Culver City Unified School District. “What we did all year long is emphasize writing.”

The essay exam, introduced in the fall of 1988, is scored on a scale of 1 to more than 400.

In 1989, the Culver City seniors, with a disappointing score of 220, did worse than 74% of others in the state. And in a separate ranking that compares a school’s performance with other schools where the students are of similar socioeconomic backgrounds and English ability, the Culver students were in the bottom 8%.

Their 1989 scores on the CAP reading and math tests were similarly low and were below those of previous Culver City classes, Jashni noted. “I think a lot of it was apathy,” Jashni said. “They just didn’t care.”

The district set out to turn that around. A team of four English teachers evaluated the high school literature classes and put together lesson plans for the whole department.

Teachers were trained on the test and its grading. Each week, they reported to the team on their classes’ writing assignments. The goal was “to make sure (there are) structured lessons that deal with the concept of the CAP writing,” Jashni said.

That included assignments similar to what might appear on the exam--such as writing an autobiographical incident or an evaluation. “We realized students didn’t know how to analyze (the questions). . . . We had some essays that were off (the) topic,” Jashni said.

Writing was spread to other courses as well. In math class, students wrote on their understanding of math concepts and how to apply them. In physical education, they wrote critiques of baseball plays, Jashni said.

Boosting the scores was a matter of school pride. The seniors “didn’t want to have a reputation like the 12th-grade class before did,” Jashni said. “They did not want to be remembered as poor writers.”

And on the big day, the school treated the test takers to breakfast and a pep talk by a “professional motivator,” Jashni said. “The whole attitude from everybody was (that the test is) important. Everyone was on the high side.”

Although part of the strategy clearly involved developing skills tailored to the CAP test, Jashni insisted that the school was not teaching to the test. “The subjects (tested) are all universal things . . . that students should know,” she said.

Culver City apparently is not alone in its writing campaign. Schools in general are assigning more composition work to their students as a result of the exam, state schools Supt. Bill Honig said in announcing the scores today.

Not surprisingly, the data showed a connection between an increase in writing assignments and improved scores.

The 45-minute exam requires students to write one of six types of essays. Students are graded on thinking and writing skills as well as spelling, grammar and basic mechanics.

Culver City seniors outdid their counterparts in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and the Los Angeles Unified School District. Beating Beverly Hills High School, renowned for its academics, was a surprise, Jashni said. “It’s nice to say, once in our life, ‘We topped you.’ ”

The Beverly Hills class of 1990 scored 276, down 27 points from the class of 1989. The overall score for seniors in the Los Angeles school district was 206, about the same as that of the prior year’s class. Results from LAUSD high schools on the Westside ranged from 183 at Crenshaw, 202 at Venice, 246 at University and 271 at Palisades.

Santa Monica High School seniors scored 259, compared to 290 for the class of 1989. Principal Nardy Samuels, however, noted that the seniors also “did as poorly” on the CAP reading and math tests. “This class just didn’t do as well in a lot of the performance criteria.

“Some classes are better, some classes are worse,” Samuels said. “I’m not too concerned about a one-year downward score. . . . If it continues for the next year or two years, then we’ll be concerned.”

* RELATED STORY, SCORES: B1, B4