State Near Bottom in Math Ranking : Education: In nationwide testing of skills, California students rank ahead of those in only one other state.

An ambitious state-by-state survey of math skills ranks California youngsters toward the rear of the pack, and shows American students as a whole slipping ever further behind in needed skills as they advance through school.

The survey, the most comprehensive effort of the 22-year-old National Assessment of Educational Progress, shows only one in seven American eighth-graders have the skills expected of seventh graders. Only one in 20 high school seniors have what they need to begin college-level math courses.

“This is an alarm bell that ought to ring all night,” U.S. Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander said at a Thursday news conference, calling the federally-sponsored survey “the most complete and significant assessment of what American children know” in math.

In overall math proficiency, California ranked ahead of only one state--Louisiana--though it topped averages in the District of Columbia, and the territories of Guam and the Virgin Islands. California’s overall score trailed 17 states; because of the survey’s wide margin of error, California’s average score was deemed statistically equivalent to the average scores in 18 other states, officials said.

Seen from another vantage point, though, California’s average score is not far from the national average. On a scale of zero to 500, California’s eighth-graders scored an average 256, compared to the national figure of 261.

Thirty-seven states and the three other jurisdictions took part in the voluntary survey of 1,300 public and private schools, which was conducted by the Educational Testing Service Inc. of Princeton, N.J., for the Department of Education. The National Assessment of Educational Progress has sampled the achievements of fourth- eighth- and 12th-graders since 1969, but this trial survey was the first time it has tested a national sample of eighth-graders to draw state-by-state comparisons.

The Education Department hopes to repeat the math assessment yearly, if it can get congressional approval.

The results brought a quick reaction from Bill Honig, California’s superintendent of public instruction, who said they “show California’s weaknesses in graphic detail.” Honig used the report’s release as the occasion to announce a “complete overhaul” of the state’s middle-school math programs.

Honig, who launched a sweeping reform of California’s math curriculum five years ago, said the state Department of Education will replace the “outmoded” middle school general-math courses with more challenging offerings, revamp textbooks, and begin preparing teachers for more advanced instruction. One hundred schools will be invited to begin more advanced middle-school math programs this fall, Honig said.

California officials said the middle-school changes have been planned for some time. Honig called them a “math Renaissance.”

The survey results showed that California’s white students were slightly ahead of the national average, while California’s African-American and Latino students were slightly below the national average. White students in California had an average score of 271, versus a national 269; black students were at 233, compared to 247; and Latino students averaged 236, compared to 244 nationally.

Asian students averaged 271, but the national sample was not large enough to draw a meaningful comparison.

Honig sought to downplay California’s difficulties, noting that California students scored above national averages in geometry and algebra and that California’s school population includes a far higher percentage of minorities and disadvantaged children than most states.

The state’s own test, the California Assessment Program, has shown that eighth-graders have improved their performance nearly 25% in four years, Honig said.

State-by-state comparisons have been a hotly debated topic for years. Many educators have complained that they create unfair comparisons because of demographic differences between states, and because tests are imprecise gauges of skill levels.

At Thursday’s press briefing, 10 consecutive speakers warned reporters against drawing misleading comparisons between states that would ignite criticism of schools and tend to cut support for expansion of the assessment program. Nonetheless, some officials saw value in drawing state-by-state comparisons.

Asked which finding about California he considered most significant, Gary W. Phillipps, associate commissioner of the Education Department’s assessment unit, said it was the fact that the state had ranked ahead of only one other state. “And they’ve worked very hard out there,” he said.

Nationally, the test showed that only 14% of eighth-graders could handle the fractions, decimals, percentages and simple algebra questions typically taught in seventh grade. Only 5% of high school seniors showed an understanding of geometry, algebra, elementary statistics and probability that the testers identified as necessary for college math courses.