Schools Suffer a Bout of Test Anxiety

To get a sense of how serious standardized testing has become, parents of high-schoolers in Placentia and Yorba Linda had only to open the mailbox or answer the phone.

In advance of this week’s Stanford 9 exams in the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District, students who fared well on the test last year received postcards from school officials urging an encore. And those teens whose scores last year fell below the 36th percentile? A personal call from a guidance counselor coaxing them to improve.

So goes this tense round of testing, in which most Orange County students in grades 2 through 11 are prepped, prodded and pestered to perform well.

Through May, about 4.1 million students statewide will clutch their No. 2 pencils and hunker over bubble answer sheets for the exam, designed to measure knowledge in math, reading, language arts, science and social sciences.

In the test’s second year, the stakes are starting to mount: Soon, some school administrators in the Placentia and Santa Ana school districts intend to use Stanford results, in part to determine placement in gifted or special-education programs. Scores may eventually be used to decide whether kids advance or repeat a grade.

The tests are “critical in today’s assessment of the effectiveness of public schools,” said Supt. Al Mijares of the urban Santa Ana Unified School District.

“The public is not interested in a thesis about whether schools are doing a good job,” he continued. “It has latched onto something quick, a test score, a numeral. . . . It’s the centerpiece of determining whether schools are effective--whether you like it or not.”

This year’s testing brings a familiar chorus of complaints from educators. The exam, spread over several days, doesn’t neatly match the state’s curriculum standards, although it’s getting closer in math and reading. The English-only format penalizes schools with lots of immigrant children. And the Stanford test is synapse-seizingly long.

“We are test-happy,” said Orange County Schools Supt. John Dean. “This is crazy. We put teachers and kids in a very frustrating situation, what with the language situation and the content of the test. We know the quality of our students and our schools. Once the test and the curriculum are aligned, our kids will do very well. Until we do that, it’s going to be ragged, no way around it.”

Although some educators don’t much like the test, they are taking it very seriously. That’s because results figure prominently in the new governor’s education reform plan.

Stanford scores will play a large role in ranking California’s public schools. Initially, low-performing districts will receive an infusion of state money to help them. Eventually, if they don’t improve, the schools will face cutbacks, staff reassignment and the possible removal of principals.

Pressure to show improvement is particularly strong in school districts such as Santa Ana, where about three-quarters of students lack English fluency.

“We are absolutely teaching to the test--no doubt about it,” fretted Martha Correll, president of Santa Ana’s teachers union. “I was talking to one teacher who spent four weeks working on teaching math testing. Is that really teaching children what they need to know in the real world? . . . The pressure is just staggering.”

At Hayden Elementary School in Midway City, where most students are not native English speakers, teachers have administered practice tests throughout the school year. Hayden School and others in the Westminster School District start testing in May.

“I told the teachers not to worry too much, but that didn’t really work,” said Principal Duane Collier. “They want to know, ‘What can we do better?’ They feel very insistent about showing better scores on the tests. When you give a teacher a test, they want to get an ‘A.’ That’s how they grew up.”

Many schools throughout the county are administering practice tests. Students in younger grades are taught test strategies: Look for clues in the questions, narrow possible answers down and always blacken the full answer bubble.

But students and staff at schools that routinely shine in standardized testing are a bit mellower.

At Fullerton’s Sunny Hills High School, Principal Loring Davies said he’s glad to be done with the tests, which some of his hard-hitting students viewed as a distraction from other achievement exams with acronyms like PSAT, ACT, SAT, AP and IB.

Those are the tests that can make the difference between a plump acceptance package or a skinny rejection letter from the University of California and Ivy League schools.

“I think our students are competitive enough and motivated enough that they want to do well on any test that crosses their desks,” said Davies, whose school is home to a rigorous International Baccalaureate program. “Certainly, they don’t see the Stanford 9 as being personally as important as Scholastic Assessment tests or Advanced Placement tests. . . . At this point, most of our students are interested in applying to and gaining acceptance to colleges and universities.”

In the Placentia-Yorba Linda district, where officials are relying on mass-mail motivation for high-schoolers, teachers feel “a lot of personal involvement” in the testing, an administrator said.

No one wants to be at a school where staff are reassigned because of low scores, said Ann O’Rourke, the district’s director of educational services.

“That’s a real stigma,” she said. “The good thing is this gives another measure to look at how kids are doing. This really raises people’s awareness of data as evidence of learning.”

The high-achieving Irvine Unified School District is taking a low-key approach to testing thus far, said parent Leslie Alden-Crowe, whose fourth-grade daughter, Caitlin, attends Turtle Rock Elementary.

Other than reminding parents to make sure their children get a full night’s sleep and a healthy breakfast, school administrators aren’t making too much fuss about the test, she said.

“We can rank all 8,200 schools in the state, and you’ll know how your school is doing,” Alden-Crowe said. “But what’s most important is your kid--how your kid is doing in school and how you’re doing as a parent.”