Countywide SAT Scores Beat National Average

While college-bound seniors from the mostly affluent Conejo Valley schools continued to post Ventura County’s highest SAT scores, Oxnard students saw the biggest jumps in their test scores compared with last year’s figures.

Overall, students countywide again outperformed their counterparts across California and the United States on the Scholastic Assessment Test in 1996, according to figures released Thursday.

The gains in the Oxnard Union High School District, where 55% of the population is Latino and many students come from non-English-speaking families, will boost teacher morale, school officials predicted.

“We are going to share these good results with all of our teachers,” said Gary Davis, assistant superintendent of educational services. “This shows there is a lot of good teaching of our college prep curriculum.” In a sense, every school district got about a hundred-point boost in combined test scores, since the Educational Testing Service changed the scale it scores on.

But even after correcting for the bump in scores, students at Oxnard High showed a 26-point gain in verbal and 21-point gain in math scores. High schools in Ventura, Ojai and Oak Park also saw increases, while Santa Paula showed a severe drop in scores.

Of the 16 schools that reported results, 13 showed combined test scores above the state and national averages. The test scores for Fillmore High were not available Thursday.

Conejo Valley Unified School District’s Thousand Oaks High posted the county’s highest average verbal score--541--and tied with the district’s Westlake High for the county’s best math score--562 out of a possible 800.

But despite these top marks, all three district high schools, including Newbury Park High, registered a decline on the verbal SAT from last year.

Officials attributed the drop to the fact that more of the district’s students took the test.

“The larger the population taking it, the lower the scores are going to be,” said Richard Simpson, assistant superintendent for instructional services. This year 63% of the district’s students took the test, a 7% increase from 1995, he said.

Educators at Moorpark High, where SAT scores declined slightly for both the verbal and math portions of the test, also blamed the drop on the rise in the number of students taking the test--from 91 to 110.

“Personally, I am not too concerned about the drop,” said Andi Mellen, a Moorpark High counselor. “They [the scores] are still higher than the state and national averages, and we’ve had a major increase in the number of students taking the test.”

Meanwhile, average test scores climbed at Ventura’s two high schools. Buena High’s math scores increased 12 points to 539 and verbal scores rose by 15 points to 537, elating a skeptical Principal Jaime Castellanos.

“I am not really a big believer in test scores,” Castellanos said. “I think they can be misleading. But I think it pretty much validates what our teachers are doing in the classroom and the curriculum that we have.”

Ventura High students on average scored 13 points higher on the verbal test and 9 points higher on the math test than last year.

The test scores for 1995 were updated to reflect a change in scoring, making the average scores on each test about 500.

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The Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT, altered the scale last year to match the average verbal score with the average math score. Before the so-called re-centering, the average math score was 478 and the average verbal score was 424.

“The main benefit that students get out of it is that colleges can interpret their scores a little more intuitively because the same score in the two subjects would mean the same percentile ranking,” said Jon Auman, director of the Princeton Review in Santa Barbara, which teaches classes on how to prepare for the test.

At Simi Valley’s Royal High School, students scored 505 on the verbal portion, showing a slight decline from last year. At Simi Valley High School, students scored 521 in the verbal portion of the test, a 13-point increase from the previous year.

“We have maintained a rigorous college prep program,” said Becky Wetzel, director of programs and assessment for the Simi Valley Unified School District. Counselors work with students on their four-year plans during freshman orientation. “We get students to plan for college before they get to their senior year.”

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Test scores at Oak Park High School have regained ground after dropping significantly last year.

While two Oxnard high schools--Hueneme High and Channel Islands High--remain below the statewide average, gains in both verbal and math portions of the test have placed Oxnard High above the state average for the first time in years, officials said.

Daisy Tatum, principal at the new campus, said the modern facilities may have energized students. But the school also provided on-site workshops for students taking the SAT.

Oxnard district’s Davis said the students’ performance is even more impressive when the scores of Latinos are considered alone. Latino students in the district scored an average of 464 on the verbal portion of the SAT, compared with 443 among Latinos statewide and 455 nationwide. On the math portion of the test, district Latino students scored 470, compared with 449 statewide and 459 nationwide.

Davis said the improving test scores are proof that the district is on the right track. But he warned against complacency.

“Right now it is only one year,” Davis said.

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Jack Smith, the principal of Ojai’s Nordhoff High, credits both his school’s English and math departments for the 3-point rise in average verbal scores to 521 and the 13-point jump in math results to 551.

“We also had a really strong class this year academically,” Smith said. “Across the board, they were just very talented. Those kids were on their way to some really fine colleges.”

A dramatic drop in average test scores at Santa Paula High, which has kept the school below state and national averages, has left educators looking for answers. Sergio Robles, the district’s director of special programs, said he did not know why the average SAT scores dropped by 40 points in verbal and 50 points in math.

“It has every likelihood of being a top priority for next year,” Robles said.

* STATEWIDE RESULTS: A1

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Ventura County SAT Scores

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1994-1995* 1995-1996 School District Verbal Math Verbal Math Conejo Valley Unified Newbury Park High 540 545 527 549 Thousand Oaks High 555 560 541 562 Westlake High 535 560 533 562 Fillmore Unified Fillmore High n/a n/a n/a n/a Moorpark Unified Moorpark High 523 525 516 522 Oak Park Unified Oak Park High 517 517 531 530 Ojai Unified Nordhoff High 518 538 521 551 Oxnard Union High Camarillo High 539 545 539 551 Channel Islands High 466 468 470 483 Hueneme High 450 458 477 471 Oxnard High 478 496 504 517 Rio Mesa High 508 516 507 515 Santa Paula Union High Santa Paula High 530 520 490 470 Simi Valley Unified Royal High 510 525 505 528 Simi Valley High 508 534 521 544 Ventura Unified Buena High 522 527 537 539 Ventura High 501 493 514 502 State Average 492 509 495 511 National Average 504 506 505 508

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* The 1994-95 numbers have been re-calibrated to use the new scoring mechanism and thus are different from those reported last year.