Success on Advanced Placement Tests Triple That of 1984 Level : Education: L.A. school district is among those surpassing national average on exams of college-level knowledge. Officials credit more rigorous curricula.

The rate at which California high schoolers succeed in passing the tough Advanced Placement tests in classes such as calculus, French literature and physics is three times greater than it was 10 years ago, providing evidence--officials say--that the state’s push for schools to offer their top students more rigorous instruction is paying off.

State education officials are to announce today that the passing rate for California juniors and seniors in the tests of college-level knowledge was nearly 11% last year, which was slightly above the national average. Many districts in Los Angeles County, including the Los Angeles Unified School District, also surpassed the national average.

But others fell short, with the Azusa, Compton and Inglewood school districts at the bottom. The qualifying rate in those districts was less than 2%.

The rate is the number of examinations with a score of 3 or better on a scale of 5, per 100 public high school juniors and seniors. That rate was 3.4 in 1984 and 10.8 in 1994.

Officials said students of all ethnicities shared in the gains. The rate at which African American and Latino students qualify for college credit remains far below that of Asian Americans and white students, but is far above what it was a decade ago.

The qualifying rate for African American students last year was 1.7%, but that was more than triple what it was a decade earlier. The rate of Latino students more than quadrupled.

Educators say the Advanced Placement tests measure only one aspect of school district performance. They point out that some districts are too small to offer the many specialized classes that prepare students for the tests or that too few students are interested in taking them.

“It’s one piece of a whole puzzle . . . but it’s not a complete picture by itself,” said Pat McCabe, an administrator with the state Department of Education’s research and evaluation division.

The La Canada Flintridge, San Marino and Palos Verdes Peninsula school districts were the only ones in the county with a qualifying rate of 50% or above, and all serve generally affluent communities where the students are expected to attend college. The performance of each of those districts increased dramatically over the past decade, with Palos Verdes Peninsula improving more than any other district in the state except one.

Palos Verdes High School, the only comprehensive high school in that district, offers preparatory courses in all areas covered by the Advanced Placement tests, Principal Kelly Johnson said.

He said the school was sixth in the nation in terms of the number of students qualifying for college credit. “We emphasize academic excellence and we think the AP test is a national measure,” he said.

The qualifying rate in the 640,000-student Los Angeles school district, the largest in the state, more than doubled during the past decade. Sheila Smith, who coordinates the district’s education program for gifted and talented students, credited its commitment to providing “advanced learning opportunities for every child.”

Every high school in the district has an advanced placement program, although they vary in the number of courses offered. Students at Van Nuys High School, with several magnet schools on campus, took 847 Advanced Placement examinations, and more than 70% of them qualified for college credit. Students at Garfield High in East Los Angeles took nearly 500 examinations and half of them earned college credit.

“All schools are on the move, in terms of advanced placement,” Smith said.

State officials said school districts offered nearly 6,000 Advanced Placement classes statewide, with an enrollment of nearly 160,000. The most popular examinations among California students last year were U.S. history, English literature and composition, and calculus.

* TEST RESULTS: B2