Most L.A. Schools’ Scores Decline in Basic Skills Test

Over the last five years, middle and high school students in the Los Angeles Unified School District have lost ground in reading, language and math--putting them far below their peers nationally, according to standardized test scores released Friday.

Despite a three-year drive to boost students’ performance, a majority of schools failed to meet even the modest goals they had set for themselves last year under a superintendent’s mandate.

Younger students made some gains, however, and there were bright spots in the nation’s largest district, including elementary school campuses such as Coeur d’Alene in Venice, where one in six students is homeless--and which dramatically improved its showing on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills for the second year in a row.

School board President Jeff Horton said the results were troubling in many ways, but he also took solace in the finding that nearly half the district’s schools scored above the national average in at least one of the three categories.

“That’s not enough, of course,” Horton said. “But it does mean there are a lot of schools where kids are performing reasonably well, which is not the impression you get from averages.”

The results released Friday were based on multiple-choice tests given last spring in three grade levels--fourth, seventh and ninth grades. The tests rank a district’s students against a national average established more than a decade ago. The scores are expressed as percentiles, with a 50 reflecting that average.

The latest tests found that scores in fourth grade have risen since 1990-91, although they stagnated in the last year and remain below the 50th percentile in all areas: at the 36th percentile in reading, the 42nd in language and at the 48th percentile in math.

Of greatest concern this year were the ninth-grade scores, which fell precipitously, leaving more than half the schools at the bottom of the pack by national standards.

At Foshay Learning Center, a kindergarten-through-12th-grade school near USC deeply involved in the district’s reform movement--which gives more independence to schools--Principal Howard Lappin said he was frustrated by his campus’ ninth-grade scores, which dropped 10 points in reading, three in math and two in language.

“Historically ninth grade has been a problem and I really don’t have a good answer for why,” he said. “I know we’re doing some good things, and why doesn’t it show?”

In the wake of the results, Lappin and his staff have decided to double their reading tutorial program, in which dozens of volunteers come to the campus to help struggling sixth-graders one-on-one.

Although not a factor at Foshay, district officials have speculated that the ninth-grade decline at many schools may be caused by reconfiguration, in which ninth grades are shifted from junior high to high school. The ninth-graders thus are faced with myriad changes: a larger, more impersonal school, far more homework and a requirement that they pass classes before they move on to the next grade.

Marian Reimann, the Los Angeles representative for the California League of Middle Schools, said it takes some schools years to adjust.

“After a while, things will start to get better,” said Reimann.

Yet, in the midst of its four-year phased-in reconfiguration, Granada Hills High saw its scores stabilize in reading and language and decline only in math. Principal Kathleen Rattay said that while she would like to take credit for doing better than the district as a whole, many of the school’s efforts to ease students’ transition only began this fall.

The district’s top administrator for instruction, Assistant Supt. Amelia McKenna, suggested that ninth-graders’ attitudes toward these tests may play a role in the decline. Teenagers just don’t get excited about a test that does not affect their grade, she said.

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The Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills, or CTBS, was designed to measure students’ strengths and weaknesses in specific skills such as spelling, reading and math comprehension. It has been criticized by education reformers for encouraging rote learning rather than the ability to think and reason, criticisms that helped spark a decision last week by the Los Angeles Board of Education to switch to another standardized test.

In addition, some local officials contend that gauging Los Angeles Unified against national norms fails to recognize the extreme differences between such a gigantic inner-city district and most other school systems. The norm was set more than a decade ago, and Los Angeles has since grown into a district where the vast majority of students begin school speaking languages other than English.

But even by the more realistic measure of the schools’ own goals, the latest results fell short.

Just over a year ago, Los Angeles Supt. Sid Thompson established what he considered a reasonable quest for the district: a one-percentage-point increase in basic skills test scores annually. At the time, he was criticized by some school board members and education reformers for not setting that bar higher, but he countered that it was better to set a goal that could be met.

This year, even that reasonable goal remained elusive in all but the fourth grade.

Coeur d’Alene set its sights low, hoping for a gain of a few percentage points. Instead, it zoomed up from far below average to above the 50th percentile in all three categories.

Principal Beth Ojena attributed the gains to a dedicated and qualified staff and a state-of-the-art computer network, which includes at least four terminals in every classroom.

Coeur d’Alene also has had a declining number of bilingual program students in recent years, a trend not seen elsewhere. Debate lingers over how much the CTBS results were affected by the language barrier faced by Los Angeles students.

On one hand, the district blamed a lack of knowledge of the nuances of English for consistently poorer showings on the language and reading tests than on the math tests.

But when students still in bilingual programs were given the companion Spanish standardized test--Aprenda--results were the opposite, with reading and language higher and math scores lower.

Why would math not have remained at the higher level on Aprenda? McKenna, the assistant superintendent for instruction, said a complicated problem may be to blame: The shortage of fully bilingual teachers leaves many students taught primarily by Spanish-speaking aides for reading and by an English-speaking teacher for other academic subjects, such as math.

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Students’ Performance (Southland Edition, A21)

The Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills is a multiple-choice examination measuring how well a district’s students do against a national average. The scores are expressed as percentiles, with a score of 50 reflecting the national average established more than a decade ago. The latest tests were given last spring by the Los Angeles Unified School District in grades four, seven and nine. The Aprenda tests are a Spanish-language version of the CTBS given to elementary-age students who do not speak English.

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Subject 1990-91 1991-92 1992-93 1993-94 1994-95 1995-96 Grade 4 Reading 33 36 36 35 36 36 Math 44 47 47 47 48 48 Language 39 41 40 40 42 42 Grade 7 Reading 33 34 33 31 31 30 Math 44 44 44 40 40 38 Language 38 38 37 36 36 35 Grade 9 Reading 28 28 27 27 25 25 Math 42 40 40 37 35 35 Language 34 33 32 31 29 29 Aprenda--Grade 4 Reading 37 39 40 39 41 41 Math 24 25 26 24 24 24 Language 39 40 41 40 43 42

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Source: Los Angeles Unified School District