COLUMN ONE : An E for Excellence or Elitism? : Cerritos’ Whitney High admits only top students, earning accolades but provoking resentment from those who say a public super-school is unfair. Backers insist the gifted deserve special programs.

Gretchen Whitney High School might well be the best public school in Los Angeles County.

Bolstered by a string of state and national awards, its record is stunning:

The Cerritos school scored a virtual clean sweep of No. 1 rankings in the region and was among the best in the state in the recent public school achievement tests. Last year, its seniors scored more than 180 points above the national average on the SAT and 100% of its students attend college.

Despite the accolades, Whitney has long been the center of controversy within the 21,000-student ABC Unified School District. Many educators and some community members charge that the district’s prized campus operates like an elitist private school using public money.

Whitney is among the nation’s most selective public schools, a specialized academy that only admits students who score at the top of a standardized test. All others need not apply.

The Whitney experience brings into sharp focus a national debate over the merits of schools and programs that cater to high-achieving or gifted students. At a time of intense outcry to improve public schools, campuses such as Whitney are typically viewed as either stellar models for success or sad examples of how our nation fails to provide equal education for all.

On one side are educators who believe that when bright students are placed in fast-track classes and schools, poor and minority students--mainly African Americans and Latinos--are generally left out, creating a racially polarized caste system. Students at all ability levels--especially in elementary and middle grades--should be mixed together so they can learn from one another’s diverse experiences. It is democracy in education, they contend.

The other camp argues that high achievers have unique needs, just as the disadvantaged do. The brightest minds need special nurturing, even separate schools. To deprive them of the challenging education they require shortchanges the nation.

“We have a responsibility in our school district to meet the needs of the high achievers,” said ABC school district board member Howard Kwon. “I feel if we put together similar students with similar backgrounds and similar future aspirations we can produce better results.”

“It’s just not right to siphon kids off,” countered a high-placed district official who requested anonymity. “This is like a private prep school where you have to pass an entrance exam to get in. Who said it’s right for a public school to exclude kids?”

Parents also exert political pressure to maintain gifted programs.

Those whose children attend schools such as Whitney tend to be among the most vocal and sophisticated in a district. Any move to cut programs, close a school or alter stringent admission requirements provokes outcries that usually send school board members rushing to endorse the status quo.

Since the school was established 17 years ago, the merits of Whitney have become contentious issues in ABC board elections. Teachers at the district’s seven other middle and high schools have signed petitions charging racial discrimination because Whitney’s predominantly Asian American student body did not reflect the ethnic makeup of the district, which also has large numbers of Latinos and whites.

Indeed, nationwide, policy-makers tread on sensitive ground when discussing how best to educate the nation’s smartest children, balancing fairness against charges of elitism.

U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley, in the federal government’s first report on gifted students in 20 years, urged states last fall to raise standards for all youngsters, provide more opportunities for the highest achievers and broaden the definition of “gifted” to include a wider range of students.

The report was careful not to use the word separate when describing how to meet the needs of bright students, calling instead for “advanced learning opportunities” and “special schools.” The concept of paying special attention to high achievers in public schools gained national attention in the 1950s when the Soviet’s launch of Sputnik propelled the United States into a frenzy to be the world leader in science and math. Programs for gifted students took hold in the 1970s, some say as a way to prevent white flight from urban schools.

“Basically, these programs are a way for a district to tacitly say: ‘Don’t take your white kid out because we’ll put him in a gifted program; he won’t have to be with those other poor, minorities,’ ” said Mara Sapon-Shevin, education professor at Syracuse University and author of “Playing Favorites: Gifted Education and the Disruption of Community.”

“It’s resegregation within public schools,” she said.

Leaders of influential organizations that support programs for high achievers say that they face prejudice as well, fighting against an anti-intellectual bias that has persisted in American society.

The national report speaks to the discomfort and distrust that Americans have with social and intellectual distinctions because ours is a culture that values equality.

Proponents of gifted education note that Americans do not have any problem with grouping students by athletic or artistic ability. No one complains when the third-string quarterback does not get to play in the championship game. Most would understand if a dance school turned down a student with two left feet.

“We should think about gifted kids as another part of cultural diversity,” said Sandra Kaplan, USC education professor and president of the California Assn. for Gifted Students. “This is another cultural group with mores that bind them together.”

The Whitney students bring the issue to real life.

“A lot of kids call us the nerd school. We have a nerdy reputation,” said Yolanda Kuo, 16. “What we are known for is our high scores--we are always ranked at the top and there is a stereotype that all we do is stay home and study.”

Maya Mitchell, 14, long since stopped worrying about being teased because of her intense study habits.

“People say to me: ‘Oh, you’re smart,’ ” using a derogatory tone of voice, Mitchell said. “And I say, ‘Yeah, I am! And it feels really good. I’m proud of it.’ ”

Whitney teachers say that one of the reasons they have been unable to win special grants in recent years is because foundations do not want to give to children who already are smart.

“Success is ignored and failure is funded,” said math chairwoman Sandy Buesch, one of the school’s 39 teachers. One national survey showed that only 2 cents of every $100 spent on primary and secondary education supports gifted education.

Whitney students receive the same per-pupil funding as every California student--about $4,500 a year. And school officials note that their students do without the most basic high school amenities. Whitney has no gymnasium, no lockers and no auditorium.

The main campus building is essentially one sprawling warehouse divided into classrooms and halls with movable walls. The campus opened in 1976 as a community education center that specialized in cooking classes. But as the Cerritos and Artesia areas were transformed from dairy land to suburbia, high school seats were in demand and the small Whitney campus became an alternative school offering bare-bones college prep instruction.

“It started out very slowly, but over time people began to feel that it had an academic environment that was superior and then there was growing demand,” said Gene Tucker, who was district superintendent at the time.

As demand grew, admission requirements intensified, further adding to the Whitney mystique. Although there is no separate Whitney admission test, every sixth-grader in the district takes a placement test before entering junior high. Only the students with the highest scores--above the 75th percentile--are admitted to Whitney. Racial and ethnic diversity is considered in a small number of admissions.

Without any more resources than other schools, teachers and Principal Pauline Ferris have turned to cultivating an environment where it is OK to spend lots of time studying and where working for an A is the norm, not the exception.

To be sure, Whitney students are not only among the smartest youths in their communities, they usually do not come to school burdened with many of the deep social problems and language barriers that make learning difficult for some public school students.

Whitney youths generally come from middle- and upper-class families whose parents push their children to achieve. The school has a zero dropout rate; 100% of students go to college and all are fluent in English.

Its 1,026-student body, which includes seventh grade through high school, is about 66% Asian American, 16% white, 8% Filipino American, 7% Latino and 2% black. Districtwide, the ethnic breakdown is 37% Asian/Pacific Islander/Filipino, 29% Latino, 24% white, 8% black and 2% Portuguese.

“Just as Whitney becomes the gifted school, by definition then the other schools are not the gifted schools, and it creates this sense that some can and some can’t,” said Jeannie Oakes, an education professor at UCLA whose research on the issue is widely known. “The notion that what happens at Whitney has to take place at a separate school and is only possible when there aren’t other children around is destructive.

“What the folks at Whitney say and what they do is what we should hope for all children,” said Oakes, who advocates the idea that students learn better when all ability levels are mixed and held to the same stiff expectations. Separate high-ability classes are appropriate for high school juniors and seniors, she says, when students have a clearer picture of their aspirations.

In the late 1980s, a group of ABC high school teachers circulated a petition signed by a majority of all secondary instructors, charging Whitney with racism and elitism.

It is not a big surprise that the school that accepts only the highest-achieving students gets top rankings on standardized tests, they say. Some say that their ability to offer an abundance of advanced courses is limited because many of the brightest children are at Whitney.

“Whitney is resented at every school, believe me,” said Richard Nivelle, a Cerritos High School math teacher. “You can call it sour grapes, but all the focus goes there, all toward creating an elitist school. . . . You have parents who come in with attitudes that Cerritos, Gahr and Artesia (high schools) are second-rate schools.”

Gahr and Cerritos High students performed better on the recent California Learning Assessment System tests than did county students overall, but Artesia students’ achievement was spottier--lower in reading but about the same as the county in math. Artesia has more students who are not fluent in English.

The parental pressure on sixth-grade children to score high on the placement test used at Whitney begins early. Elementary teachers say they have parents demanding that their child be placed “on the Whitney track” in elementary school.

Testing day can cause overwhelming stress for children. A few get sick during the exam; a few break down in tears.

“I’m very opposed to what Whitney does to my children. It’s a very negative thing,” said one sixth-grade teacher who requested anonymity. “I watch it destroy kids. I watch it pit one kid against the other. I watch it pit one race against the other. . . . They think their whole life is ruined or made by their scores on that test at 11 years old.”

But for the parents whose children do get into Whitney, the achievement is a source of family pride.

“I don’t know that I would say it’s a status symbol. It’s a wonderful opportunity,” said Ed Fagan, who added that his two sons would be in a private school if they were not in Whitney. “I simply have a problem with today’s public school system. There are too many kids and too much time is spent working on discipline and teaching to the lowest level rather than addressing the needs of the brightest.”

Whitney High School

* Enrollment: 1,026 in grades seven through 12

* Location: 16800 Shoemaker Ave., Cerritos

* Admissions: All students must score above the 75th percentile on a standardized test.

* Dropouts: None

* Teacher/Student Ratio: 1 to 31

* College Enrollment in 1993: All seniors went on to college--47% to University of California campuses, 44% to private or out-of-state colleges, 4% to Cal State universities, 3% to community colleges and 2% to military academies.

* 1994 Senior Class Honors: Out of 152 seniors, there were 21 National Merit semifinalists, 22 National Merit commended scholars, one winner of a National Achievement Scholarship for Outstanding Negro Students and one National Hispanic Scholar semifinalist.

* Test Scores: Whitney ranks No. 1 in Los Angeles County in five areas of the California Learning Assessment System tests. These are the percentages of students scoring in the top three levels combined: eighth-grade math, 53%; eighth-grade writing, 94%; 10th-grade math, 57%; 10th-grade reading, 90%; 10th-grade writing, 88%.