Stanford 9 a Test of Nerves as Well as Achievement

It’s not how most boys would have chosen to spend a Saturday morning, but there was Erich Burciaga Ruiz perched beside his mother at a parents workshop on standardized testing. And he was getting worked up at the mere thought of tackling the Stanford 9 on April 17.

“It makes me very anxious,” said the fifth-grader from Brentwood Science Magnet School in Los Angeles. “I’m scared of failing. I’m worried about the future.”

If that sounds like awfully cosmic thinking for a 10-year-old, chalk it up to the pressure cooker atmosphere surrounding the Stanford 9 achievement test, which is being given this spring to about 4.1 million students in more than 8,000 California schools.

The stakes are high. Test scores will figure heavily in Gov. Gray Davis’ plans to put pressure on schools to improve. Likewise, beginning next year, Los Angeles schools Supt. Ruben Zacarias will scrutinize Stanford 9 results along with grades to determine which students get promoted.

As a prominent if hotly disputed measure of a school’s performance, test scores can even determine whether home values in a neighborhood rise or fall.

With all this hanging in the balance, the heat is on educators--and parents--to make students test-savvy without turning them into neurotic messes inclined to choke at the sight of a No. 2 pencil.

As a result, test prep has become the hottest subject around--from the Sierra foothills to the Central Valley to Los Angeles. Some year-round schools finished the test in March, but most students will be on the hook this month and next.

Statewide, many schools are giving practice exams to make elementary-age pupils more adept at filling in the bubbles on multiple-choice answer sheets. Others have altered their curricula to adhere more closely to recent state reading and math standards, which will be tested for the first time in this year’s Stanford 9. Still others are simply urging parents to make sure that children get lots of sleep the night before the test and a protein-rich breakfast on the morning of the exam.

All are working to reduce the anxiety children have about taking standardized tests while emphasizing how important they are.

Nowhere is the Stanford 9 being ignored.

“There’s a saying in our cluster: If your test scores don’t go up, nothing good is going to happen to you,” said William Elkins, cluster administrator for schools that feed into Jordan and Locke high schools in Los Angeles.

Principals’ Jobs Are on the Line

Signaling his own strong belief in testing, Zacarias last year put 30 schools with lagging scores on notice that if their showing does not improve by the end of this school year--the third year of Stanford 9 testing for Los Angeles schools--he will place them under receivership. That would mean reassigning or demoting principals, suspending local decision-making and revoking budget flexibility.

“This [season’s test showing] is definitely going to be a crossroads for the district,” said Brad Sales, a spokesman for Zacarias.

That message has blared like a fire drill bell through 118th Street School, which last year scored in the 12th percentile on the Stanford 9--the lowest among the Los Angeles Unified School District’s 661 schools. That means the average student at the school scored better than only 12% of a norm group derived from a national sampling.

“We are working hard to teach test-wiseness,” said Principal Robert M. Caplan. “We are bombarding our students.”

Indeed, a visitor to the 587-pupil South-Central school sees any number of “intervention programs” in action--all aimed at improving academic proficiency, particularly for the majority of students with limited English skills. Only by boosting basic language skills, Caplan figures, does the school stand a chance of bettering its test performance.

Programs include Open Court, a reading program steeped in phonics; a Writing to Read computer lab; a “reading recovery” program, in which teachers work one-on-one for 40 minutes a day with faltering students; and Key Links, materials from the Stanford 9 test publisher that drill students on content areas. And tutoring is available after school and on weekends.

The school’s 38 teachers, many of them new, say the state’s academic standards, posted in every classroom, have helped them design consistent, focused lessons.

Sandra Sklarsh and 10 other teachers developed a new lesson and homework format that mimics the Stanford 9 in appearance--if not content, which the test publisher, Harcourt Educational Measurement of San Antonio, attempts to keep a closely guarded secret. Every day in Sklarsh’s third-grade classroom, pupils practice bubbling in answers and get frequent reminders that the test might ask which answer is wrong, rather than which is correct.

Still, Melinda Ali, whose 10-year-old daughter, Zuri, is a fifth-grader, sees more fundamental problems keeping 118th Street children from shining. For many of the pupils, she said, the only solid food they get is breakfast and lunch at school. Many live in crowded homes where books and quiet study nooks are nonexistent.

“How,” she asked, waving her hand at head level, “can you expect their test scores to be up here?”

At Longfellow Elementary School in Compton, teacher Racquel Welch said her colleagues cover test-taking just as they might cover science or language arts. “We work on test-taking skills and strategies even before content,” she said.

The prospect that schools would start “teaching to the test” led to harsh criticism of the Stanford 9 last year when it was introduced statewide. Detractors also complained that the test is administered only in English--hampering districts with large immigrant populations.

All California students in grades 2 through 11 are required to take the Stanford 9 test, regardless of English fluency. The Los Angeles Unified School District also requires first-graders to take it.

Many education professionals say a strategy of teaching to the test is doomed to fail. Plain good teaching, they say, can get lost in the shuffle.

“I’ve expressed the concern that people will do the things that will show gains quickest because they’re easiest,” said Eva Baker, co-director of the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at UCLA. “When you start trying to directly affect that score, the numbers might go up, but it might not reflect real learning.”

Richard F. Elmore, a Harvard education professor, is more blunt: “Test preparation, except in a very limited way, is a waste of time. It’s [used] when the teaching is weak and the kids don’t really know the stuff.”

Teachers and principals with diverse student populations say the deck is stacked against their pupils because the test is, as one Compton teacher described it diplomatically, “a little more European” than previous California tests.

“When you have [standardized test] questions talking about the family ski trip or about missing the 5 o’clock family dinner, it’s not necessarily realistic for our children,” said Norris Curl, an eighth-grade teacher of U.S. heritage at Whaley Middle School in Compton.

Despite all the preparation frenzy, one state official fears that scores will continue to disappoint.

“The test is way out in front of what’s going on in the classroom,” said Gerry Shelton, administrator with the California Department of Education’s testing program in Sacramento. “We know in a lot of cases students are not going to perform well.”

Many parents say they prefer to let the scores fall where they may. At workshops, they are warned not to force children to cram for the test but rather to create a calm atmosphere to settle any jitters. They are told that the test should be viewed as a snapshot of a child’s performance--and as only one of many measures of ability and intelligence that will come along in a student’s academic career.

That suits Michele Cloud. “We don’t make any special preparations at all,” said Cloud, whose daughter Chelsea, 13, attends Palms Middle School. “With the Stanford 9, I’d rather find out what she can do without any special instruction. If we know where she’s falling behind, we can work on those areas.”

As a UCLA psychology major who has studied standardized tests, Nicole Ramsay urges her son, Jonathan, to take his time. “He tends to hurry through,” she said. Jonathan, a fifth-grader at Canfield Avenue School, acknowledges that he tends to get nervous before the test and “a little bit confused” by the directions.

Test Difficulty Surprises Parents

To give parents an idea what their children face, Melrose Avenue School Principal Regina Goldman presented them with a sample test at a workshop.

“They really were all amazed at the difficulty and wished they had had more time to do it,” she said. To keep parents informed, Goldman writes about the Stanford 9 in each month’s newsletter. Taking a long view, she also increased the amount of art and music taught in the school--with the aim of improving attendance throughout the year but especially at test time.

Melrose Avenue second-grade teacher Nancy Bisharat credits daily reading and writing with boosting scores. The school’s Stanford 9 score soared by 19 percentile points last year, the biggest gain in its cluster. Yet it still reached only the 37th percentile, and Goldman is striving for the 50th.

At John Muir Middle School, math and science teacher Gary Kaloostian in February was named the school’s testing coordinator. Because Muir failed to show improvement last year, Kaloostian said, the pressure is intense.

Teachers have “spent most of the year aligning the curriculum to the test standards,” he said.

To encourage students to show up throughout the test period, Muir assistant principal Karen Cheval plans a rock ‘n’ roll concert for those with perfect attendance.

The Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District doesn’t have such worries. Last year, the affluent district topped all others in Los Angeles County on Stanford 9 scores. The test is a topic of conversation but not a source of high anxiety. Individual teachers decide whether to drill students on test-taking skills.

“The [Stanford 9] is a snapshot,” said Rosemary Claire, the district’s director of curriculum. “It is sustained academic growth that we look for from our students.”

Sometimes parents are caught unawares by their children’s test anxiety. At the recent parents test preparation workshop on the Westside, Ophelia Ruiz was stunned by her son Erich’s comments. “It’s not something that will kill you,” she said, seeking to put him at ease. “You just need to listen carefully.”

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Stanford 9 at a Glance

All California students in grades 2 through 11 are required to take the Stanford 9 test in English, regardless of their level of English fluency. The Los Angeles Unified School District also requires first-graders to take the test.

For grades 1 through 10 in Los Angeles schools, this will be the third year of Stanford 9 testing; 11th-graders will be taking it for the second time.

Some students at year-round schools completed this year’s test in March. Other students will be taking the test this month or next. Testing is generally done in 2 1/2-hour segments over several mornings.

For the first time this year, the Stanford 9 will include a set of questions designed to test students’ mastery of the state’s recently set standards for reading and math.

About 11.5 million students in 10 states take the Stanford 9.