Scores in Outlying Schools Run From High to No-Show : Tests: Results indicate highest marks generally were gleaned by students in more economically advantaged areas.

Learning proficiency scores in outlying Valley-area school districts ran the gamut from consistently high test results in the affluent Agoura and Westlake Village areas to no marks at all in areas where parents led a statewide boycott of the now-defunct measuring system.

Like previous versions of proficiency testing, the latest results indicate the highest scores generally were gleaned by students living in more economically advantaged neighborhoods.

The La Canada Unified School District--long recognized for its stable population of established, higher-income households--posted the highest overall marks of student scores in Valley-area districts. Close behind were the Oak Park and Las Virgenes unified school districts in the communities bordering the Los Angeles-Ventura county line.

Officials of several of the districts attributed higher scores to greater emphasis in recent years on developing writing performance and new applications for mathematics. Marilyn Lippiatt, superintendent of the 2,700-student Oak Park district, said new techniques are designed to prepare students “to apply those concepts that they learn in math to real world situations.”

At the other end of the chart, though still outranking performances by students in the Los Angeles Unified School District, were schools in the desert communities of Palmdale, Pearblossom and Lancaster. The lowest comparable scores among fourth-graders were in the Wilsona, Keppel Union and Eastside Union elementary districts.

Several other districts in outlying areas, however, could not be ranked because the percentage of students taking the controversial test was too small to provide reliable results. For instance, in the Gorman School District--the smallest in the county with an enrollment of 79 in the tiny mountain community 35 miles north of the San Fernando Valley--no results could be reported because several students were absent for the tests, Principal Mary Griffin said.

Scores also could not be tabulated for high schools in the Antelope Valley Union and Conejo Valley Unified school districts because many parents boycotted the tests for what they contended were questions promoting anti-family values and intrusions into student privacy.

While students in most local districts generally scored higher in reading and writing skills than in mathematics, at least half of the fourth-graders also demonstrated their proficiency in math in five of the 18 local elementary districts. Those schools included classrooms in the La Canada, Oak Park, Las Virgenes, Conejo Valley and Saugus Union school districts, in descending order of overall scores.

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The La Canada district again came out the leader with the most impressive overall scores among eighth-grade students in 16 Valley-area junior high and middle school districts. Nearly 80% of La Canada students scored well in reading, 77% in writing and 60% in math. Other districts besides those in the West Valley where eighth-graders scored above average in certain fields were in the Castaic Union, Glendale Unified, William S. Hart Union and Burbank Unified school districts.

Math skills at the senior high level indicated the poorest performance in the eight Valley-area senior high school districts where well more than half of the students fell below state standards of proficiency. Among the local districts that were scored, only 16% of 10th-graders in the Burbank Unified School District and 17% in the Glendale and William S. Hart districts scored in the top three levels for math.

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Test Score Comparison The chart below shows the percentage of students locally and statewide who scored 4 or higher on CLAS tests, based on performance levels of 1 to 6. *

GRADE 4 Statewide Reading: 22.8% Writing: 32.0% Math: 27.8% *

LAUSD Reading: 17.0% Writing: 26.0% Math: 15.0% *

GRADE 8 Statewide Reading: 38.8% Writing: 46.3% Math: 23.1% *

LAUSD Reading: 24.0% Writing: 28.0% Math: 10.0% *

GRADE 10 Statewide Reading: 34.6% Writing: 38.9% Math: 14.3% *

LAUSD Reading: 25.0% Writing: 26.0% Math: 6.0% Sources: State Dept. of Education and Richard O’ Reilly, director of computer analysis at The Times