Test Results Release

* I applaud Supt. Charles Weis and the other Ventura County school officials for releasing the standardized test scores of schools.

I also agree with those who point to the difficulty in interpreting the scores--but not because the scores are lowered by non-English-speaking students. That is easy to interpret and understand.

The greater problem is that the scores presented are not the fraction of questions answered correctly but the percentile placement of the school among all schools in the nation. This relative score is certainly useful, but without the absolute scores, the results are almost as meaningless as if the absolute scores were given with no relative scores.

Suppose there were a total of 10 schools that gave the test and their students’ average correct answers were 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 35%, 40%, 45% and 50%. If your child went to the school where the average score was 30%, would you be happy because your school was at the 60th percentile--the kind of score released to the public--or would you be outraged that the kids missed 70% of the answers?

Now suppose the students in the 10 schools got average scores of 90%, 91%, 92%, 93%, 94%, 95%, 96%, 97%, 98%, 99% and 100%. Your school is still at the 60th percentile, but now that means the kids only missed 4% of the answers. Not so bad. In fact, even the school at the 10th percentile is doing OK.

Since only the percentile scores have been published, it is impossible to know where between these two extremes is the real situation. The information exists; it just hasn’t been made available.

What is really needed to measure progress is a standard test that is given to all grades at all schools, and which tests for the same knowledge every year. Second-graders would miss a lot of answers and eighth-graders should miss only a few. Then we would have the absolute measure of progress that we need to evaluate changes in method and curriculum.

BRENT MEEKER

Camarillo

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* Everyone has to believe that had the scores of the recently released Stanford 9 testing portrayed Ventura County schools in a better light, educators throughout the county would have been thumping their chests saying, “That’s right, we bad!”

But the results didn’t. So, outside of the Conejo Valley and Oak Park districts, where real estate agents can pump results into outstanding-schools sales pitches, parents with children in public schools are stuck with educators who would rather slough the tests off as only one indicator or actually blame the testing for poor results instead of face up to the fact that they and their feel-good curricula have failed.

Skepticism abounds as educators allude to the unfairness of the tests being given only in English. To drive home this point, Oxnard officials (with 1,749 limited-English-speaking students) claim that by removing those students’ scores, their fifth-graders’ math scores rise from the 26th percentile to the 34th. That may be true, but 34% is still abysmal, and the fact that the numbers rose is all the evidence one needs to suggest that bilingual education has probably been holding those students back.

All in all, the Stanford 9 test results should stand as a testament to today’s students. That they have been able to learn in spite of all the social engineering the public school system has heaped upon them is astounding. Automatic advancements, grading curves, “new” maths, “whole language” reading. Administrators have defended every one and can now only say that the release of these test results “allows us to continue to develop a sound educational system” and see them as “an opportunity to improve how they work with kids.”

In their minds, these may be lofty ambitions, but the public schools used to have a very sound system in place. And until an increasing influx of revenue became more important than an outflow of properly educated youths, the schools did not work with children, they taught them.

School officials and teachers need to take these result for what they represent: a system that needs to go back to the basics that worked so well. Until they do, students will continue to languish is a sea of mediocrity--one in which the people they look to for knowledge seem all too content with comparative failure.

BRUCE ROLAND

Ojai