Spelling Scores Echo Critics of Curriculum

This is the way it used to work: On Monday mornings, teachers would introduce a list of new spelling words. They were read in stories, written in sentences and memorized during the week, and a test was held on Fridays.

A decade ago, state officials abandoned this rote method of instruction for a “whole language” approach. Educators theorized that spelling and other language skills would be better learned by immersion in good books instead of drills and memorization. Many now believe it was an experiment that did not work.

“It was a system that failed us, horribly,” said William Habermehl, the associate superintendent of instruction for Orange County schools.

Nowhere is the evidence more obvious than in the results of the statewide Stanford 9 achievement exam, which were released last month. In nearly every grade, school and district in Orange County, test scores were lower in spelling than in the other core subjects of reading, math and language. Even schools that aced the test didn’t score as high on spelling. And discounting the scores of students who are not fluent in English, spelling scores still are low.

Nearly every California student in grades 2 through 11--including limited-English speakers and those with special needs--took the test last spring.

Orange County students scored above the national average in math and language, but just below the 50th percentile in reading and spelling. Percentile rankings measure how a student--or a composite of students countywide or statewide--performed on the test compared with a national sample of test takers. By definition, the 50th percentile is the national average.

County students, as a whole, scored just under the national average--the 49th percentile--on the spelling test. But they fared better than their California peers, who didn’t score above the 42nd percentile.

The outcome didn’t astonish Habermehl, who said: “I would have been shocked if we’d done well.”

Students in the Los Angeles Unified School District also scored lower in spelling than in other subjects in some grades, according to the test data. A spokeswoman for the district said educators there are beginning to analyze the test scores to find out why.

In Orange County, school administrators said they realized the curriculum lapse long ago. In the last year or two, some have been squeezing spelling instruction back into classroom time and selecting new textbooks that devote more pages to spelling exercises.

And the traditional skill-building methods are now being brought back into the newfangled curriculum, educators said.

“Teachers have been frustrated by the lack of a structured [spelling] program for years,” said Roberta Thompson, superintendent of the Anaheim City School District.

Those students failed to score above the 35th percentile in spelling, but the Anaheim district is one of the few where spelling scores were about the same as test results in reading, math and language.

Even in the top-scoring Irvine Unified School District, officials said they were concerned about the dip in spelling test results.

“It’s one of the pieces we’re looking at,” said Dean Waldfogel, deputy superintendent for curriculum at the 22,500-student district.

Irvine students scored near the 70th percentile in the core subjects, while performing worst in spelling.

Third-graders, for example, earned a 63rd percentile in spelling and sixth-graders scored at the 72nd percentile.

Proponents of the whole-language philosophy believe that using literature, instead of textbooks, helps children become lifelong readers. In this system, the teaching of all language arts, including phonics, grammar and spelling, would be approached through reading and writing.

Basic skills were often ignored, critics said. In some cases, student spelling errors were ignored by teachers who didn’t want to discourage creative writing, state and local educators said. And young children were encouraged to spell phonetically so it wouldn’t interrupt the rhythm of their words.

In an effort to make school more relevant, and more fun, the curriculum outlawed such “boring” activities as rote memorization and phonics drills, said Dennis L. Evans, vice chairman of the UC Irvine department of education. Many now see that as a mistake.

“We sort of threw the baby out with the bathwater,” Evans said. “There are some things in learning that are difficult and not enjoyable, but they are important.”

But many state officials defend the approach known as holistic teaching, and say that some of the failures can be blamed on extreme misapplications of the curriculum.

“I’m never going to say that whole-language produced bad spellers, no,” said Diane Levin, a language arts consultant with the California Department of Education. “Kids absolutely have to have the skills they need to be able to write and communicate, and that includes spelling.”

Last December, the State Board of Education adopted new standards for language arts mastery--including spelling--at each grade level. Levin said the standards are expected to match the spelling curriculum with what is tested on the Stanford 9 exam.

The test itself has been suggested by Waldfogel and other educators as another reason for low scores.

Most classroom spelling tests ask a child to spell a word correctly in a sentence or identify how it is misspelled. But the Stanford 9 exam is multiple choice.

“It’s an artificial way of testing spelling,” said Catherine D’Aoust, coordinator of language arts instruction for the 31,000-student Saddleback Valley Unified School District.

The district’s third-graders scored in the 59th percentile in spelling and sixth-graders scored in the 62nd percentile. But students scored above the 65th percentile and in some cases above the 70th percentile, in reading, math and language.

“Their ability to spell is not reflected in those scores,” D’Aoust said.

Despite the test results, Habermehl, the county school official, said he fears that spelling still won’t get the attention it deserves in classrooms.

“There is a lot of pressure on teachers to bring reading and math scores up,” he said--but there has been a lesson learned.

“We realize now that spelling is important,” Habermehl said.

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Spotting the Error

Most students in Orange County scored lower in spelling than the other core subjects of ts. The numbers below are measured in percentiles. The 50th percentile, by definition, is the national average.

The following are sample practice test questions for the spelling portion of the Stanford 9 achievement test. Students must select the sentence in which a word is misspelled. The correct answer is marked with an asterisk.

GRADE 3:

A. The boy stood up.

B. The packige came this morning.*

C. Our food was tasty.

D. No mistake

*

A. He is rideing the bus.*

B. Are your parents here?

C. This ribbon is blue.

D. No mistake

GRADE 6:

A. The plan is not very practical.

B. I have learned to waltz recently.

C. His signature is on the paper.

D. No mistake* *

A. A flower grew in the garden.

B. This song seams very long.*

C. Adam has thrown the rock.

D. No mistake.

SCORES

Statewide

Grade 3:

Reading: 36

Math: 42

Language: 39

Spelling: 38

*

Grade 6:

Reading: 43

Math: 48

Language: 47

Spelling: 40

*

Countywide

Grade 3:

Reading: 42

Math: 50

Language: 45

Spelling: 43

*

Grade 6:

Reading: 51

Math: 59

Language: 55

Spelling: 49

*

Saddleback Valley Unified School District

Grade 3:

Reading: 64

Math: 70

Language: 67

Spelling: 59

*

Grade 6:

Reading: 66

Math: 74

Language: 69

Spelling: 62

*

Irvine Unified School District

Grade 3:

Reading: 68

Math: 74

Language: 71

Spelling: 67

*

Grade 6:

Reading: 76

Math: 84

Language: 76

Spelling: 72

*

Los Alamitos Unified School District

Grade 3:

Reading: 69

Math: 74

Language: 73

Spelling: 57

*

Grade 6:

Reading: 70

Math: 72

Language: 68

Spelling: 60

Source: California Department of Education

Sources: Harcourt Brace Publishers, California Department of Education