State’s Students Rank Below National Average

California students in most grades are lagging the nation in reading, mathematics and other basic skills, according to statewide test scores released Tuesday. But much of the gap results from the huge number of students required to take the all-English exams who are not fluent in the language.

Overall, students statewide ranked ahead of those in Los Angeles County, but not by a wide margin.

In fourth-grade reading, students statewide ranked in the 40th percentile and students in Los Angeles County in the 31st. The nationwide average is, by definition, the 50th percentile.

In eighth- and 10th-grade reading, the state’s students ranked at the 44th and 32nd percentiles, respectively. The county’s students ranked at the 37th and 26th percentiles.

Statewide scores in mathematics were somewhat closer to the national average--between the 40th and 50th percentiles, compared with Los Angeles County scores in the 30s and 40s.

Scores in Orange and Ventura county schools, meanwhile, tended to outpace the statewide scores.

Percentile rankings use a 99-point scale to measure how one student--or in the case of the state, a composite of all students--did compared to others in a nationwide sample. Differences of one or two points are usually not statistically significant.

Of the 4.1 million students in grades two through 11 who took the Stanford 9 exams as part of the most ambitious testing program in California history, about 800,000 were classified as having limited English skills. Separate scores released by the state showed that those students scored in the 8th to the 19th percentile in reading and in the teens and 20s on other subjects.

The state has roughly 1.4 million students in kindergarten through 12th grade who have limited English skills--more than in any other state. The state required districts to give the exams to all students, regardless of English ability, but in some districts, a high percentage of students with limited English were nonetheless excused from taking the tests. Testing officials also say that some students with limited English skills may have been misclassified in their records.

Judge Releases Complete Scores

The release of the scores culminated a weeks-long legal struggle between the state and a handful of school districts. The districts alleged that the requirement that students be tested in a language they do not understand well illegally discriminated against them.

A San Francisco judge last month issued an order blocking release of the test scores. But on Tuesday, a second judge allowed that order to expire.

As part of his new ruling, however, Judge David A. Garcia of San Francisco Superior Court also ruled that the state may not require local districts to notify parents or teachers about how students with the least knowledge of English did on the test.

But many districts already have sent information to parents and teachers, so the effect of Garcia’s ruling is unclear.

Among the highlights of the scores released Tuesday:

* Reading scores dipped sharply in high school, following a pattern noted in previous analyses of the tests. Eighth-graders scored in the 44th percentile and ninth-graders in the 34th. State officials have so far been at a loss to explain the apparent lag in reading skills in the upper grades.

* In math, fourth-graders ranked fairly low--at the 39th percentile. But the state’s ninth-graders scored in the 50th percentile.

* In science, the state’s high school students scored around the 40th percentile. In social sciences, they did about the same except for a jump in performance by 11th-graders, who scored in the 54th percentile.

* In spelling, only students in sixth grade scored as high as the 40th percentile.

As has been true from the beginning of the testing program, state officials disagreed about how to interpret the scores.

State Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin released a statement saying that “it should come as no surprise that [limited English] student scores are generally lower than those of other students. California students who cannot read the test are clearly at a disadvantage with those who can.”

Gov. Pete Wilson, who had pushed hard for the renewal of statewide testing, had a more critical view.

“The scores continue to be disappointing,” Wilson said. “Not surprisingly, the [limited English students’] scores are down. . . . The scores are disappointing. They are below the national norm in most instances.”

Wilson also blasted the new restrictions Garcia put on the state regarding reporting scores to parents and teachers. The judge was guilty of “terrible legislative overreaching from the bench,” he said.

In addition to his ruling on parent reports, Garcia also ruled that the state could not tell districts to put the individual scores of certain limited-English students in their academic files. Nor can the state require local school officials to make any academic decisions based on those scores, he ruled.

The Stanford 9 tests were published and scored by Harcourt Brace Educational Measurement, based in Texas. The company estimates that 10 million students nationwide take the tests each year. Eight other states use the Stanford 9 to track student performance.

The national averages are calculated using a separate pool of students across the country who take the examination. By contrast with California, barely 1 in 20 in that national group were students with limited English skills.

The Stanford 9 was the first statewide test in four years, after the demise of the California Learning Assessment System, which was widely criticized for technical flaws and for posing questions that many parents felt were too subjective.

On the Stanford 9, students from grades two to eight were tested in reading, mathematics, written expression and spelling. Students in grades nine to 11 were tested in reading, mathematics, written expression, science and social sciences.

Bay Area Districts Sued Over Scores

Garcia’s ruling came in a lawsuit pitting the state against the San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland school districts.

In his ruling, Garcia declined to renew an order blocking the release of the scores that had been issued by a Municipal Court judge June 25. That judge had accepted the districts’ argument that immediate release of the scores could discriminate against students who were forced to take the test but did not know enough English to understand it.

Originally, full scores were required by law to be posted by June 30 on the state Department of Education’s Web site.

Garcia’s decision allowed the state to mobilize its plans to put full, grade-by-grade scores for each of California’s 1,000 districts and 8,000 schools on the Internet.

About 7 p.m. Tuesday, the scores were posted on the Department of Education Web site, https://www.cde.ca.gov.

Those who browsed the site could find the scores under the logo STAR, short for Standardized Testing and Reporting program. The scores were indexed by county, school district and ZIP code.

A quick perusal of the county-by-county scores found that the perennially high-achieving students of Marin County, were around the 70th percentile in reading in lower grades and near the 60th in high school grades.

By contrast, some of the lowest scores in the state were in rural areas such as Tulare County. There, reading scores were at the 27th percentile in fourth grade, the 35th in eighth grade and the 23rd in 10th grade.

Individual districts and counties had been free all along to release their scores. Many already have, and many parents have also received reports in the mail about how their children did.

State attorneys also said Garcia rejected an argument by the San Francisco school system that the testing program should be put on hold until the state approves new standards for how well students should perform in various academic subjects.