For Many Parents, Test Doesn’t Make the Grade

Thousand Oaks parent Sandra De Witt doesn’t put much stock in California’s new statewide test of public school children.

De Witt said the Stanford 9 exam confirmed what she already knows about her 7-year-old daughter, a second-grader at University School: that she is a solid student who gets good grades and does well on standardized tests.

But the test revealed little about the academic performance of her 12-year-old son. The sixth-grader at Meadows School did poorly on the exam, but De Witt said that was expected given a range of learning disabilities with which he contends.

And what it couldn’t show is that her son actually had the best year of his school career, that after years of struggle he has started to flourish in the classroom.

“I think test scores give you an accurate view of a very small percentage of the population,” said De Witt, a librarian at Meadows.

“They have some value but they can also be very flawed and give the wrong impression,” she said. “You really need to know kids and know education to know what you’re looking at, and most people don’t know either.”

And so it goes for the state’s historic effort to gauge the knowledge of public school children. Around Ventura County, parents are taking the scores as an indicator--but not the last word--on how their children are doing in school.

The Stanford 9, the first standardized tests in California since 1994, was given this spring to an estimated 4.2 million students statewide, including about 102,000 Ventura County students in grades two through 11. On Friday, school officials unveiled the scores for local districts, showing students in Oak Park, Camarillo and Thousand Oaks as the top performers on the basic skills test.

Students in those districts were the only ones to score above the 50th percentile in every grade for reading, language, spelling and math. That means in those subjects, they did better than at least 50% of the students in a national sample.

The Oak Park district, long an academic powerhouse in the region, posted the highest scores, with students ranking no lower than the 61st percentile in all test subjects.

In language, for example, seventh-graders ranked in the 85th percentile, fifth-graders in the 82nd and eighth-graders in the 80th. Scores were equally impressive in math, where sixth- and ninth-graders ranked in the 80th percentile.

Some of the county’s smaller districts fared very well on the test.

The 500-student Mesa Union School District in Somis scored at or above the national average in nearly every category for grades two through eight.

And the 120-student Mupu School District north of Santa Paula turned in impressive numbers, led by second-graders who ranked in the 78th percentile in math, in the 59th percentile in reading and in the 50th percentile in language.

“That particular group worked really hard,” said Jeanine Gore, who serves as superintendent, principal and first- and second-grade teacher for the tiny district. “The high scores may surprise people but they are not a surprise to us.”

Results for every school in California--including those in the 20 districts scattered across Ventura County--were supposed to be posted on the Internet this week. But that apparently will be delayed by a court order blocking widespread release of test scores.

A San Francisco judge ordered state officials Thursday not to release the results after school officials in Berkeley and Oakland objected to the state’s requirement that all students take the exams in English regardless of whether they could speak the language.

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The judge’s order only blocked release of the scores of students who are not fluent in English. But state officials said they could not separate those scores in time to release the data as scheduled.

For school officials who had long worried that scores would inaccurately reflect the performance of districts across the state, the ruling strikes at the heart of the issue.

“It’s no surprise that kids who could read the test did far better than those who couldn’t,” said Charles Weis, the county’s superintendent of schools. “The scores lack validity and reliability if given in a language children don’t understand.”

The basic-skills exam was meant to tell parents whether their children were keeping pace academically with their peers statewide.

It also was meant to tell taxpayers whether they are getting their money’s worth as they pour more than $1 billion a year into reducing the size of classes in the primary grades.

Finally, the test was meant to make schools accountable, providing the largest attempt in the state’s history to gauge what’s right and what’s wrong with California classrooms.

Individual student scores have been arriving in mailboxes across Ventura County over the past couple of weeks, a precursor to the statewide release of results.

Simi Valley parent Colleen Ary received scores for her three school-age children more than a week ago. They were sent home with report cards and produced few surprises.

Her 9-year-old daughter, Amelia, for example, scored in the 92nd percentile in reading, 89th percentile in language, 71st percentile in math and 60th percentile in spelling.

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Ary said those scores mirror the grades she brought home on her report card from Hollow Hills Fundamental School.

“It helps verify that my children’s teachers know them and that they are spending the requisite amount of time to assess their performance,” said Ary, an outspoken advocate of tougher school standards and the statewide testing program.

“There’s nothing wrong with competition or comparisons,” Ary added. “I feel badly for parents who do not have the knowledge that their children are in low-performing schools. Without that comparison, they don’t know their kids are getting shortchanged.”

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

Camarillo parent Mimi Timrott said she considers the test only one measure of her children’s performance. Her daughter, Lena, was a fifth-grader last year at Bedford Open School.

While not willing to share specific results, Timrott said Lena scored above the 50th percentile in every subject. Another daughter, 8-year-old Danielle, is visually impaired, and Timrott chose not to have her take the test.

“I don’t think there’s anything that’s perfect,” said Timrott, who serves as second vice president for the Camarillo PTA Council. “But as a parent I want to see that students in our district are all receiving an equitable education, and I think testing can help show that.”

In fact, the test results can be used to show a variety of things. Thousand Oaks real estate agent Jim Keith said it’s even possible the test scores will make their way into promotional literature sent to prospective buyers.

“It’s not as important as it once was, but obviously people moving into an area are very interested in the schools,” said Keith, president of the 1,000-member Conejo Valley Assn. of Realtors and father of three.

“Whenever I send a package to somebody coming in from out of town, I send a report card from the various school districts,” he said. “This is something else I might use. It’s one of the selling points we use to lure people our way.”

Ventura school board member Debbie Golden has considered the standardized tests from two perspectives.

As a mother of three, she said she sees limited use for the exam, knowing full well by now how her children perform academically. But as a school official, she knows there is a need for the public to see whether their schools are working.

“As a parent, I see less value in the tests than I see as an official,” said Golden, appointed to the school board in February to fill a vacancy.

“But I really am interested in what’s best for all kids,” she said. “We need a baseline, we need to be accountable to the public, and in that way I think these tests have merit.”