Conejo Schools Score High, Ventura Mixed on Stanford 9

Two more Ventura County school districts on Tuesday released results of a historic statewide exam of public-school children, including the Conejo Valley Unified School District where students performed well above the national average in all subjects.

In the Ventura Unified School District, results were a little more mixed with most students in grades two through 11 hovering near or slightly above the national average.

Educators in both districts said they were mostly pleased with the scores their students posted on the Stanford 9 exams, given this spring in an unprecedented effort to gauge the knowledge of California’s schoolchildren in key areas.

“Overall, we are extremely pleased to see how the results have treated us,” said Richard Simpson, assistant superintendent for the Conejo Valley district.

“The next step is to take them by school and by class all the way down to every subtest to see where our strengths are and where we need some improvement,” he said. “It’s more like microsurgery than like going in with dynamite. You want to fine-tune the things you can do better without destroying the things that are working well.”

As has been the case with other Ventura County districts, test scores in the Conejo Valley bumped up a few percentile points when limited-English-speaking students were filtered out of the testing pool.

Many educators around the state have long been concerned that scores would be low because many students who are not fluent in English were required to take the test.

Conejo Valley’s middle school students turned in the top performances, with grades six, seven and eight scoring above the 70th percentile in reading, language and math.

That means in those subjects, Conejo Valley’s middle school students did better than at least 70% of the students in a national sample.

Simpson attributes those solid scores, in part, to an early push by parents and educators to prepare youngsters for college.

“In a district like ours, which has a real high expectation that kids are going to go on to college, students are really starting that path in those years,” Simpson said.

The Stanford 9, the first standardized tests in California since 1994, was given this spring to an estimated 4.2 million students statewide.

The test measures skills in reading, mathematics, language and spelling in the primary grades. For grades nine through 11, the test also measures knowledge of science and history.

Districts across Ventura County are at various stages of releasing test results.

The Pleasant Valley School District in Camarillo, the Oxnard Union High School District and the Ojai Unified School District unveiled scores last week.

Other districts are waiting until June 30 to do so, when scores for schools across the state will be posted on the Internet by the state Department of Education.

In the Ventura district, school board members got a detailed briefing Tuesday night on how to interpret the scores and how to use them to improve educational programs.

However, educators warned that the Stanford 9 is only one gauge of school performance and should be used in conjunction with other academic measures available to students.

“This is one test, a snapshot in time, and we’ll want to see growth over time,” said Beth Fruchey, director of special projects for the Ventura district. “This is good data. Comparison is helpful, but it’s not the only game in town.”

Ventura’s middle school students had the most consistent scores.

Seventh-graders, for example, scored in the 59th percentile in language, 55th percentile in reading and 50th percentile in math and spelling.

Eleventh-grade students turned in the best scores, ranking in the 61st percentile in history, the 52nd percentile in language and the 49th percentile in science.

Breaking down the scores even further, juniors at Buena High scored in the 69th percentile in history, the 60th percentile in language and the 54th percentile in science and reading.

Juniors at Ventura High scored in the 58th percentile in history, 49th percentile in language, 49th percentile in science and 36th percentile in reading.

Conejo Valley officials have only released preliminary results, so similar rankings for high schools in Thousand Oaks were unavailable.

However, officials did release scores by subject for ninth-, 10th- and 11th-grade students. As was the case in the Ventura district, Thousand Oaks’ 11th-graders posted the top scores, ranking in the 73rd percentile in history, 72nd percentile in math and 71st percentile in science.

Officials in both districts said they plan to thoroughly study the results in coming months.

In the meantime, officials in Ventura and Thousand Oaks have joined educators across the county in sending reports to the parents of each student who took the test. The reports show how students scored in each subject measured against a national sample.

In Ventura, Fruchey told board members Tuesday night that parents also will receive information on interpreting the scores and will be encouraged to schedule conferences with teachers to discuss the results.

“We really want to get a true picture of where their needs are,” she said. “And this gives us some hints in terms of areas to look at.”