SAT Scores Rise Slightly for L.A. High Schools

Los Angeles high school graduates who took the SAT college admission exam this year raised the district’s verbal score slightly over last year, while math scores held steady, according to results released Tuesday.

School officials said they will offer extensive preparation for the test in the 1998-1999 school year in hopes of achieving a bigger improvement.

“We are estimating we are going to provide test prep for 5,000 students who have never had it before,” said Bob Collins, director of curriculum, instruction and assessment.

Despite the barely measurable improvement overall, district officials highlighted strong gains at several schools, led by Kennedy High School in Granada Hills. Its advances of 33 points in verbal and 35 in math were both district highs.

Other schools that improved on both portions of the test included Sylmar High School, up 18 in verbal and 14 in math; Roosevelt High School in East Los Angeles, up 17 in verbal and 18 in math, and Venice High School, up 16 in verbal and math.

Conversely, several schools registered large losses. Gardena High School fell 26 in verbal and 18 in math, Jefferson in South Los Angeles fell 23 in verbal and 26 in math, and Polytechnic in Sun Valley fell 22 in verbal and 15 in math.

Van Nuys High School maintained the district’s highest scores in both categories, despite small losses, followed by El Camino High School in Woodland Hills.

Supt. Ruben Zacarias’ emphasis on getting more Los Angeles students into college helped turn around a four-year slide in the number of students taking the SAT, a measure used by colleges to predict performance.

Still, the 11,239 SAT tests represented only a 2% increase over 1997--less impressive growth than at either the state or national level--and remained below the 1994 high of 11,679. Statewide, 5% more students took the test, and nationally the increase was 4%.

The average verbal score of 433 represents a seven-point gain over the past five years, while the 452 in math is the same as five years ago.

District scores continued to trail the state, which scored 497 in verbal and 516 in math, and the nation, which scored 505 in verbal and 512 in math.

The gains at Kennedy--coupled with significant improvements on this year’s Stanford 9 test taken by all 9th-, 10th- and 11th-graders--validate the school’s efforts to improve reading comprehension, Principal Warren Mason said.

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L.A. Unified SAT Scores

Below are listed the SAT college entrance exam results for the Los Angeles Unified School District’s graduating class of 1998. The first two columns show the average verbal and math scores of all students tested at each high school. The second set of columns show how many points the school average gained or lost on each portion of the test compared with the class of 1997. The SAT is used by colleges, along with high school grades, to predict college performance.

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1998 Score Change ’97 School Verbal Math Verbal Math Banning 381 394 -21 -22 Bell 376 396 -1 -12 Belmont 387 411 0 +2 Birmingham 447 460 -4 -14 Bravo Med Mag 466 488 +22 +15 Canoga Park 448 473 +21 +3 Carson 408 420 +5 +5 Chatsworth 475 505 -5 0 Cleveland 474 493 -14 +7 Crenshaw 392 375 +16 0 Dorsey 378 385 -6 +8 Downtown Bus Mag 429 457 +14 +18 Eagle Rock 459 478 +20 +6 El Camino Real 514 559 +11 +8 Fairfax 432 471 +12 +5 Franklin 386 405 -13 -1 Fremont 340 363 +6 +3 Gardena 402 411 -26 -18 Garfield 381 396 +1 -4 Granada Hills 492 519 +14 +2 Grant 479 503 +18 +6 Hamilton 474 476 -3 +9 Hollywood 413 431 +13 +18 Huntington Park 396 405 +7 +15 Jordan 344 372 +14 +22 Jefferson 330 355 -23 -26 Kennedy 463 499 +33 +35 Lincoln 370 428 0 -24 Locke 367 371 +1 -22 Los Angeles 396 434 +6 +17 Los Angeles CES 494 466 -7 -18 Manual Arts 354 357 -14 -19 Marshall 418 438 +6 0 Monroe 438 460 -18 -7 Narbonne 472 510 -14 -5 North Hollywood 469 487 -16 +7 Palisades Charter 492 515 +3 +5 Polytechnic 401 427 -22 -15 Reseda 443 480 +13 +10 Roosevelt 389 417 +17 +18 San Fernando 392 421 -5 -10 San Pedro 476 472 -9 -11 Sherman Oaks CES 483 518 -19 +22 South Gate 409 411 +6 -2 Sylmar 403 415 +18 +14 Taft 497 526 -3 +5 University 485 526 -15 -3 Van Nuys 539 560 -2 -12 Venice 483 499 +16 +16 Verdugo Hills 430 453 +6 +7 Washington 377 371 +8 +11 Westchester 431 437 +2 +5 Wilson 400 417 +8 -14

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