Schools Work to Improve Scores on State Test : Education: Instructors are using samples to familiarize pupils with the unusual format of the California Learning Assessment System exam, which covers reading, writing and math.

Less than a week after the release of new statewide assessment test results, many educators in west Ventura County are taking steps to boost their school’s scores in the next go-round.

They don’t have much time.

The next California Learning Assessment System tests will be given to fourth-, eighth- and 10th-grade students across the state in the last week of April and in early May.

To prepare students for the tests, some school officials said their main task is convincing those teachers who remain critical of the new testing system of the exam’s importance.

“I think the secret is we’ve got to get teachers to understand the importance of the scores,” said Bill Studt, superintendent of the Oxnard Union High School District, which had the lowest reading scores in the county in the CLAS results released last week.

At some schools, teachers don’t need any convincing.

Cabrillo Middle School teachers in Ventura have already begun using sample tests in their classrooms to help students become familiar with the unusual format of the CLAS exam, which assesses students in reading, writing and math.

Unlike previous statewide assessments that consisted solely of multiple-choice questions, CLAS asks students to write their responses to pieces of literature and to explain how they arrived at solutions to math problems.

“We’re trying to match what’s being taught in the classroom with what is being tested not only in content, but in format,” said Kris Bergstrom, principal of Cabrillo.

Cabrillo students had the lowest scores on the CLAS writing test of any of the Ventura Unified School District’s four middle schools.

District officials expressed surprise that the writing scores at the relatively affluent middle school were below those of DeAnza Middle School, whose students come from the mostly poor Ventura Avenue neighborhood.

Only 44% of Cabrillo’s eighth-graders last year demonstrated an ability to write in a coherent, organized manner, compared with 48% of DeAnza’s eighth-grade class.

Several years ago, officials noted, DeAnza began aggressively adopting new academic programs to boost student performance.

“All of us were really, really pleased,” DeAnza Principal Dave Myers said. “One of the things that DeAnza has had for a number of years is real strong emphasis on instructional practices.”

Bergstrom said she is confident that Cabrillo’s scores will improve as the school continues its shift to new, state-mandated curriculum that teaches skills tested by CLAS.

Cabrillo officials also plan to send letters to parents telling them the dates of the next CLAS tests and asking them to ensure that their children come to school well-rested and mentally prepared for the grueling exams, Bergstrom said.

Although DeAnza officials were generally pleased with their students’ scores on CLAS, they are also enlisting parents’ help in boosting future test scores.

The school’s Parent-Teacher Assn. will hold a forum later this month to explain how parents can help their children master the writing and problem-solving emphasized on CLAS tests. “Parents are used to working (with their children) in a situation where there’s a right or wrong answer,” Myers said. But CLAS puts less emphasis on students’ getting the right answer than on their explaining how they arrived at that solution.

“It’s fundamentally different than it was before,” he said. Children “are going to be coming home with different activities than sitting down with 25 long-division problems.”

Like DeAnza, officials at Ventura High School were mostly pleased by the CLAS results.

Ventura High students performed better in reading and about the same in math compared with their peers at Buena High School, despite a view among some residents that Ventura High is academically inferior to its cross-town rival.

“There’s that myth out there that has been attached to the image of Ventura High School,” Principal Jerry Barshay said. “The CLAS tests show that the academic scores for reading, writing and math for Ventura High School are equal to or better than our neighboring schools.”

Still, Barshay hopes that new academic programs begun at the school this year, including an after-school tutoring program, will help improve the school’s scores on the next CLAS tests.

In some districts, educators are first trying to decide whether they trust the scores from the last CLAS tests before they make changes to improve future scores.

In Camarillo’s Pleasant Valley Elementary School District, officials were surprised to see that their fourth-grade students scored below the county average in reading, while their eighth-graders were well above the county average in the same subject.

Supt. Shirley Carpenter said she wants to examine the fourth-grade reading scores in comparison to the students’ results on other standardized exams before she draws any conclusions.

But Pleasant Valley school trustee Jan McDonald said she thinks that the scores send a clear message: “It tells us that something’s not right and there’s something we need to fix. It’s going to take some time to find out what’s gone wrong.”

But, she added, “we’re going to find out.”

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