Reading Test Scores Rise in Compton
Five years after abysmal academic results and financial insolvency pushed Compton’s beleaguered school district into state receivership, school administrators announced Tuesday that reading scores for nearly all grades from first through 12th rose significantly this year.
The results offer the first hint of an academic improvement in Compton, though school officials acknowledged that virtually all the scores continued to lag far behind national averages.
“You’ve got to remember that scores were in the pits for a very long time,” said Randolph Ward, who has run the district for the last 19 months. “It’s very exciting that the data from many directions show us that we’re climbing out finally.”
Improved academic performances are especially important in Compton, where a bitter debate over returning the district to local control has divided the school board, politicians and residents. State administrators have said the district can return only when its academic results--and financial stability--are on firm footing.
Of the announced results, Compton’s first-grade scores made the greatest leap, jumping 51% and creeping ahead of the national median average. Nine other grades posted increases of 25% or more in percentile rankings.
Ward said the results need more scrutiny to determine the exact causes for the enhanced performances. But he credited class-size reduction and new methods of teaching early reading for improvements among first- and second-graders.
Ward also said that test results were helped in part by the district’s decision to keep about 1,200 third-, fifth- and eighth-graders from moving up a grade. The threat of retention, he said, had encouraged a sense of responsibility among students, teachers and parents.
The results come from the California Achievement Test Form 5, known as CAT/5, which was given to all English-proficient students in the district. The test is different from the Stanford/9 test, the new statewide achievement test in reading and math for grades two through 11. The Department of Education has scheduled the release of Stanford/9 results later this month.
Although Compton’s latest scores are good news, there also is cause for concern, said Robert Calfee, a professor at Stanford University’s School of Education.
Only Compton first-graders topped the national average. All other grades ranked firmly in the bottom third of percentile rankings.
“Their scores are still--in absolute value--very low,” Calfee said. “And the scores are lower as you look ahead [at the higher grades].”
Though 12th-graders’ results were up by 28%, their score reached only the 15th percentile. Similarly, 10th-graders saw their scores leap by 30% but were still only in the 16th percentile.
Studies have shown, Calfee said, that special reading programs have successfully boosted scores at the youngest grades. But those programs often failed to translate initial success into better reading scores as students grew older, a phenomenon Calfee called “poop out.”
“It’s far easier to get scores up in the earlier grades than it is in later years,” he said. “[Compton schools] are doing better on the things that matter less in the long run.”
But Ward insisted that together with other data, the results point to a new direction for Compton’s school district, one that will eventually see it returned to local control. Attendance figures rose about 5% in the last year while the dropout rate saw a slight dip.
“Many of the indicators show that we’re really on a roll,” he said. “But we still have a lot of work to do.”
