Local CLAS Scores Range From Highest to Lowest : Education: County’s top math and reading scores are posted by Palos Verdes Peninsula fourth-graders. In Inglewood, curriculum overhaul to follow weak showing.

South Bay students logged some of the best--and the worst--scores in the county on the controversial California Learning Assessment System, which tested fourth-, eighth- and 10th-graders in reading, writing and math.

Fourth-grade students in the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District had the highest math and reading scores in the county, but students in the Inglewood Unified School District logged the lowest 10th-grade reading scores countywide.

Michael Escalante, assistant superintendent of the Palos Verdes Peninsula district, said school officials were “quite pleased” with the results. He attributed the high scores to “outstanding kids, an outstanding community and an outstanding teaching staff.”

Inglewood officials, meanwhile, said they plan to overhaul the district’s curriculum for kindergarten through 12th grade to ensure that students at each grade level are learning what they need to know for the following year.

“We got a big message here,” Assistant Supt. Lowell Winston said. “We’re going to use (the test results) as a teaching tool to get some information and data about our students and programs and curriculum. We’re going to make some adjustments.”

The CLAS test was designed to show districts how well their students perform against objective standards. State officials, however, decided to stop administering the tests after the governor’s office criticized the exams and parents charged that they invaded families’ privacy by asking probing questions and forcing students to read provocative material.

Overall, about half of the South Bay’s school districts outscored county averages for each grade level in each of the subject areas. Manhattan Beach Unified, El Segundo Unified, Hermosa Beach and Wiseburn were also among top-scoring districts in the South Bay.

Complete scores were not available in Torrance and Redondo Beach, two communities where parents and school officials were critical of the exams.

Parents in about half of Torrance’s elementary schools, all but one middle school and one of the four high schools opted to prohibit their children from taking the tests. And the Redondo Beach Unified School District board stopped administering the exams halfway through after board members reviewed the test and decided the reading and writing portions were inappropriate.

Although most school administrators said they considered the test a useful tool to determine student achievement, changes in the way the tests were scored make it difficult to accurately compare last year’s scores with this year’s.

That isn’t stopping El Segundo Unified Supt. William Manahan from celebrating the “remarkable improvement” in test scores logged by El Segundo students.

Last year, for instance, only 8% of El Segundo’s eighth-graders demonstrated high-level mathematical skills, Manahan said. This year, the number rose to 32%.

“It’s a huge improvement for us,” Manahan said. “I often hear, ‘Well, our kids don’t live in Manhattan Beach or Palos Verdes,’ as if implying our kids aren’t capable of doing as well. But these results reinforce what we felt all along, that our kids . . . can do the job.”

Reading scores were also significantly higher than they were in years past, Manahan said. Fifty-three percent of the district’s fourth-graders showed high-level reading skills, outscoring Manhattan Beach, where 47% of all fourth-graders had a thorough or very good understanding of a text.

Manahan attributed the gains to the hiring of a reading specialist and the launching of a reading program that gives first-graders individual attention in reading for a 10-week period. The district has also used state grants and other funds to keep class sizes low, he said.

In addition to Inglewood Unified, other low-scoring South Bay school districts included Hawthorne, Lawndale and Lennox elementary school districts and Centinela Valley Union High School District.

Hawthorne fourth-graders posted some of the lowest scores in all three subject areas in the South Bay. Only 12% of the district’s fourth-graders could effectively interpret what they read, and only 11% could demonstrate higher mathematical skills. Seventy-five percent of them scored in the bottom three levels in writing.

District spokeswoman Sara Sellers said the scores are not as bad as they seem when you consider that nearly 42% of the student population speaks limited English. The population is also highly transient, she said. Each year, one in four students is new to the district.

Such factors are even more dramatic at the Lennox school district, where 93% of the students speak limited English.

Only 18% of Lennox’s fourth-graders scored in the top three levels for reading, while 87% demonstrated only partial, limited or virtually no mathematical skills. Twenty-three percent demonstrated good to excellent writing skills.

“If you look at the whole district, we were about the same or a little higher in grade four and eight than the county,” said Daniel Jurenka, assistant superintendent of educational services. “Were we as good as we want to be? Heck no. Not by a long shot. But in general, we’re very competitive with the county.”

Although schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District generally performed at a low level, a few bright exceptions in the South Bay stood out. Taper Avenue School and Park Western Place, both in San Pedro, had some of the South Bay’s higher-scoring fourth-graders.

* HIGH-RANKING SCHOOL: J5