Good, Bad Found in Education Reports

California’s top two education officials acknowledged Monday that students in the state lag behind their counterparts across the nation in some key areas but they also touted some successes and hinted at strategies for doing better.

Their evaluation was timed to dovetail with three national reports, one of them the National Education Goals Panel’s first assessment of progress toward the six education improvement goals set by the Bush Administration and the nation’s governors two years ago.

The state report--compiled by Bill Honig, superintendent of public instruction, and Maureen DiMarco, Gov. Pete Wilson’s secretary of child development and education--admitted that students in the most populous state rank below the national average in eighth-graders’ math skills, in verbal scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test and in how many academic courses high school students take.

But the state report also detailed some triumphs.

For example, California’s average score on the SAT’s math section is above the national average, and the numbers of California students who pass the rigorous advanced placement tests for college credits is almost double the rate nationally.

In Orange County, all but a handful of the 15 school districts scored above the state average on the SAT math section. County advanced placement scores are not yet available, state Department of Education officials said Monday.

While expressing satisfaction that Californians may be closing some gaps, Honig said: “The point is, the nation is nowhere near where it’s supposed to be, so just catching up doesn’t mean much.”

Honig said the state report released Monday provides a “pretty good handle on how kids are doing here, our strong points and our weak points” and will be used as a “base line” for measuring future progress.

Orange County Supt. of Schools John F. Dean said local students by every measure continue to do better than state or national averages.

“It certainly isn’t meteoric, but there is steady improvement, and this is despite increased class sizes,” Dean said Monday. “I think we’re doing very well at educating students, at increasing the number of students who are graduating from high school, and in preparing them for the work force or college. . . .

“And I have a great deal of confidence in the local communities to expect good schools and to support them,” Dean added.

The California report contains little new information but pulls together statistics with an eye toward setting performance goals for more than 5 million California youngsters, including increasing numbers of minorities and the poor.

One of the state’s most eye-catching weaknesses appeared in math achievement levels. A spring, 1990, sampling of eighth-grade students found only 50.6% of California students to have mastered basic skills. Nationwide, the figure was 58.2%.

State education officials have established new standards and asked 100 schools to develop new math curriculum and testing methods as examples for the rest of the state. Teachers are to begin using the new materials soon, with “special emphasis” on developing criteria for a “new generation of textbooks” to be available by 1994, the report said.