O.C. Scores Are Among Highest in California

Orange County students posted some of the highest scores in the state on the new California Learning Assessment System, but the results released today show that even students in the county’s strongest districts have far to go to reach achievement standards set by state officials.

Within the county, districts that have traditionally done well on standardized tests continued to post the highest scores, with larger, more urban districts ranking near the bottom.

But when schools are analyzed individually, campuses from throughout the county are sprinkled at both high and low ends of the spectrum, prompting some educators to praise the new tests as a better evaluation tool while others attacked the entire concept.

“As we look carefully at the data and what it actually says, we don’t think it really means anything,” said Barbara Smith, assistant superintendent of the Capistrano Unified School District. “Until CLAS can create a test that is verifiable and valid, we’re going to continue to look more closely at other measures we have of student achievement.”

The new assessment program--a three-part test in reading, writing and math that fourth-, eighth- and 10th-grade students took last spring--is scored on a complex six-level scale.

Student scores were not recorded individually. Rather, only about a third of the tests statewide were scored, and results show the percentage of students in each school, district or county who scored at each of the six levels.

The state did not rank schools or districts, but officials suggested that the best way to compare scores is to combine the percentages of students who scored in the top three levels. In all three grades, Orange County was among the counties showing the strongest scores in the three subject areas, ranking third or fourth at each grade level statewide when scores of 4, 5 and 6 in all exams are combined. Marin County, a suburban county north of San Francisco, ranked first in each grade level.

Every local district matched or beat the state average for eighth-graders, while three-quarters of the districts bested the statewide scores at the fourth-grade level. Among 10th-graders, only Santa Ana Unified, the county’s largest district, and Anaheim Union High School District scored below the state average.

But even here, the scores are not exactly flattering: Nearly a third of Orange County students at each grade level demonstrated little or no mathematical thinking, posting the lowest possible score, and about half the local students scored in the bottom half of the scale in reading and writing.

“We’re not as good, of course, as we would like to be,” said John F. Dean, superintendent of the Orange County Department of Education. “Everything new has a shakedown cruise. Now that everybody knows what we’re looking for, I think we’ll do a heck of a lot better next time, I really do.”

In Orange County, nearly 69,000 fourth-, eighth- and 10th-graders took the tests. Not tested were those whose native language is not English and students in separate special-education classes or juvenile court schools and independent-study programs.

Within Orange County, the unified districts of Irvine, Laguna Beach, Brea Olinda and Saddleback top the list at all grade levels when scores of 4, 5 and 6 were combined across subject matter. Irvine Unified stands out for overall excellence, with individual schools and districtwide averages that rank near the top in every measure and large percentages of students posting scores of 6.

Other districts with high-ranking scores in certain areas include:

* Huntington Beach City and Ocean View Elementary, fourth-grade reading;

* Fountain Valley Elementary, eighth-grade reading and fourth-grade writing and math;

* Los Alamitos Unified, 10th-grade reading and eighth-grade writing.

Scores of 6 were rare locally and across the state. The tests are not scored on a curve, and a score of 6 was reserved for exemplary work. Statewide, many schools and districts posted no scores of 6.

In Orange County, the highest percentage of 6’s among districts came in Brea Olinda, where 6% of the 10th-graders scored a 6 with writing that “is confident, purposeful, coherent and clearly focused, conveying the writer’s knowledge, values, insights and clarity of thought,” according to the state scoring system.

Laguna Beach had the greatest percentage of top scores in reading among eighth-graders, with 4% earning a 6, which means these students “consider texts as a whole,” explore it in depth and “relate it to their own experiences and the world at large.”

For some, the revolutionary CLAS tests brought surprisingly good results.

Garden Grove Unified, a huge district where more than one-third of the students have limited English proficiency, ranks higher on these assessments than it has on previous standardized tests. Garden Grove did especially well at the 10th-grade level, ranking eighth among county districts--above Placentia-Yorba Linda, Tustin and Newport-Mesa, which are typically top scorers.

“We’ve just spent a lot more time in preparing kids to do critical-thinking types of approaches and to learn to solve problems, and to think through problems,” said Al Sims of the Garden Grove district. “We feel real strongly that this is a move in the right direction for the state. The kids we graduate now . . . are going to be more prepared for the workplace.”

Analysis of individual schools’ performance showed no district monopolizing the top or the bottom of the rankings. Combining the top three scoring levels in all subjects, at least six districts had schools among the top 10. The same was true for the bottom of the list.

However, in the fourth grade, Newport-Mesa has three schools among the top 10. In the eighth grade, Irvine has four of the top 10 schools. And in the 10th grade, Huntington Beach Union has four of the top 10 schools.

University High in Irvine, long regarded as among the best high schools in the state, stood out, its 10th-graders ranking first overall, first in reading and math and third in writing when scores of 4, 5 and 6 are totaled.

Individual schools with large percentages of level-6 scores include:

* University High in Irvine, with 12% of 10th-graders earning 6 in writing;

* Troy High in Fullerton, with 10% of 10th-graders earning 6 in writing;

* Vista Verde Elementary (K-8) in Irvine, with 14% of eighth-graders earning 6 in reading and 9% in writing;

* Harbor View Elementary in Newport Beach, with 13% of fourth-graders earning 6 in writing; and

* Brywood Elementary in Irvine, with 11% of fourth-graders earning 6 in writing;

“We have kids whose parents are well-educated--the expectation is that they are well-prepared and come to us with an ability to excel, so we would expect that they would perform well on these kinds of assessments,” said Irvine Unified Supt. David E. Brown.

“If our only basis of knowing that we’re doing well is that we’re doing better than everyone else, that’s not good enough,” Brown said. “We need to know that we’re doing better than the standard.”

Looking at the standards set by the CLAS scoring system, the results countywide show much room for improvement. Especially disappointing are the math scores, where even the top districts have two-thirds of their students scoring in the three lowest levels.

Countywide, 89% of fourth-graders, 84% of eighth-graders and 83% of 10th-graders scored 1, 2 or 3. Statewide, the numbers are similar, with 91% of fourth-graders, 87% of eighth-graders and 88% of 10th-graders scoring 1, 2 or 3.

As is the case across the state, scores of 6 are especially scarce in math: No district posted a 6 in the fourth-grade math portion. Only Los Alamitos and Brea Olinda unified posted 6’s in eighth-grade math, and only Los Alamitos Unified had 6’s in 10th-grade math; in each case, only 1% of the students have the highest scores.

“I wonder if we are too hard on ourselves,” Dean said. “. . . I mean, we all want perfection, but my gut-level response is we’re being very rigid. Our kids didn’t do as well as I know they can do. I know their education is better than this. To me, one possible explanation is that we’re a little tough on ourselves in terms of scoring.”

Some schools that have traditionally fared well on standardized tests floundered on the new math assessment. The test included multiple-choice questions involving several computations, and students were asked to solve a word problem showing their work with charts, pictures and essays.

At the eighth-grade level, the three schools at the bottom of the math ranking are, surprisingly, Travis Ranch (K-8) in Yorba Linda; Corona del Mar High (7-12) in Newport Beach; and Fred Newhart (K-8) in Mission Viejo. Those schools posted no scores of 6, 5 or 4 in the math test; each had about 70% of their students score a 1, which means “student work demonstrates little or no mathematical thinking and understanding of mathematical ideas,” and at least 25% scored a 2.

By means of comparison, in the Los Angeles Unified School District, 86% of the eighth-graders scored a 1 or 2 on math.

At Corona del Mar, a school that sends 98% of its students to college and is well-regarded around the state, Principal Tom Jacobson simply could not believe the results.

“It’s such an earth-shaking drop, it just doesn’t seem possible. I’m going to ask for a recheck,” he said, incredulous. “If that’s what the scores are, we’ve obviously got a lot of work to do.”

As on other standardized tests, the county’s largest district did poorly on CLAS when compared to its neighbors: Santa Ana Unified, which has the county’s highest level of limited-English speakers and the lowest socioeconomic index according to the state, ranks last among local districts at every grade level. The district’s four high schools were among the six lowest ranked (excluding continuation schools) when 10th-graders’ reading, writing and math scores of 4, 5 and 6 were combined.

Santa Ana Unified spokeswoman Diane Thomas said the new assessment was especially difficult for her district, where nearly 70% of the students have limited-English proficiency, because even the math questions required sophisticated language skills.

“Taking standardized tests is difficult” for a district like Santa Ana. “It’s a challenge,” Thomas said.

“We play by the rules the state gives us to play by,” Thomas said. “We do the best we can to prepare our students for the kind of tests we need to give them. The test serves as a guidepost. We can use this as a road map to help us go on down that road.”

* O.C. DISTRICT RANKINGS: Schools’ test performances. B8