Poor Scores Mystify School : Education: Eighth-graders at high-achieving Corona del Mar High posted lowest scores in Orange County on state math test. Principal says the results ‘must be a mistake.’

Corona del Mar High School has long been synonymous with success.

It’s a place where 99% of the students graduate each year, and 98% of those go on to college--some to Harvard, Princeton and Stanford. It is a school that is near the top of the charts on Scholastic Aptitude Tests, last year posting scores on the math portion that were nearly 100 points higher than state and national averages.

But according to results of the new California Learning Assessment System released today by the state Department of Education, Corona del Mar High students posted the lowest scores in Orange County on the eighth-grade math test.

What happened?

“There must be a mistake. I find it hard to believe,” said Corona del Mar Principal Tom Jacobson, who promised to ask the state for a recount. “It’s very tough to believe that kids at this school would score that low.

“If it’s accurate, obviously there’s something wrong,” Jacobson added. “We’ll have to go back to the drawing board and look again. If that’s what the scores are, we’ve obviously got a lot of work to do.”

State officials said it would take several weeks to determine whether there had been any errors in processing the tests taken last spring by more than 1 million students statewide, including 193 eighth-graders at Corona del Mar.

More likely, they said, the students simply did poorly on the revolutionary CLAS math assessment, which judged them on their explanations of how they solved problems, not just on whether they got the right answers.

Math scores were surprisingly low across California, but the scores at Corona del Mar were among the lowest in the state and particularly alarming because of the school’s past performance on other standardized tests.

“I am quite sure that the people at Corona del Mar would be the first to admit that those scores are not what they’re capable of,” said Cloyde McKinley (Mac) Bernd, superintendent of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District. “It could be that the skills that are being tested in math were not taught.”

On the new tests, student scores were not recorded individually. Rather, results were listed by school, district or county. Scoring was done on a six-point scale of objective achievement standards, with paragraph-long criteria in each category.

At Corona del Mar, 71% of the eighth-graders who were tested posted the lowest possible score, a 1, meaning they demonstrated “little or no mathematical thinking and understanding of mathematical ideas,” according to the state criteria.

An additional 26% of the students did slightly better, scoring a 2, which demonstrated “limited mathematical thinking and understanding.” One percent of the students earned a 3, and no statistically relevant segment scored a 4, 5 or 6.

Two other Orange County schools scored almost as poorly on the eighth-grade math test. At Fred Newhart Elementary (K-8) in Mission Viejo, 97% of the students scored 1 and 2, and 2% scored 3. At Travis Ranch (K-8) in Yorba Linda, 96% scored 1 and 2.

“There’s a complete lack of consistency between what these math tests tell us and what other data is telling us,” said Barbara Smith, assistant superintendent of the Capistrano Unified School District, which includes Newhart Elementary. “I think there’s a lot of trouble with the scoring. I would question its validity, its reliability, its repeatability . . . a lot.”

To help parents and school officials analyze the results, the state Department of Education provided each school with test results from 100 schools with similar socioeconomic and demographic descriptions. Average scores for schools comparable to Corona del Mar were far better: only 16% scored 1, while 24% scored 3, 22% scored 4 and 5% scored 5.

Similarly, the school was outscored by its peers in the Newport-Mesa district, where the overall average eighth-grade math scores included 40% scoring 1, 32% scoring 2 and 2% scoring 5.

Corona del Mar eighth-graders’ math results were somewhat of an anomaly for the school: The same students scored far better in reading and math, and the 10th-graders there scored higher on all three subjects.

“It’s probably going to take us a few years to get everything in synch with the new tests, but even if we hadn’t taught our students anything” about the new testing methods, “I know enough about our students to know that 90% should not have scored 1’s and 2’s,” Jacobson said.

County Rankings Here is how schools in selected Southern California counties rank among the state’s 58 counties. Rankings are based on percentage of students who scored in the top three levels of the California Learning Assessment System.

Math 4th grade 8th 10th Orange 8 13 4 Los Angeles 35 40 40 Riverside 44 44 43 San Bernardino 48 43 45 Santa Barbara 12 11 18 Ventura 9 25 25

Reading 4th grade 8th 10th Orange 4 7 4 Los Angeles 32 44 31 Riverside 36 36 32 San Bernardino 42 45 35 Santa Barbara 13 9 22 Ventura 5 14 11

Writing 4th grade 8th 10th Orange 8 7 5 Los Angeles 38 44 42 Riverside 37 37 34 San Bernardino 41 48 29 Santa Barbara 19 26 19 Ventura 9 11 14

Corona del Mar High Founded: 1962 Grades: 7-12 Student population: 1,400

Ethnicity White 88% Asian 8 Latino 4

Dropout rate 1988-89 1.6% 1989-90 2.3 1990-91 0.6 1991-92 1.4

Class of 1993 SAT Scores

Verbal Math Corona del Mar 482 574 California f415 484 U.S. 424 478

Class of 1993 Disposition Four-year colleges: 54.6% Two-year colleges: 41.8 Trade Schools: 1.6 Work force / military: 2.0 Source: Corona del Mar High School * MAIN STORY: A1

* TEST RESULTS: B4-B8