Valley Schools Pleased With Gains in Scores

Pleased but not quite ready to celebrate, San Fernando Valley school officials Friday began analyzing school-by-school results on statewide standardized tests and considering ways to improve next year’s scores.

Like many school districts throughout Southern California, Los Angeles Unified students made modest gains in reading and math on this year’s Stanford 9, the results of which were released Thursday by the California Department of Education. But districtwide, Los Angeles schools largely were still ranked in the bottom third nationally.

“The scores are pretty abysmal,” said David Tokofsky, a Los Angeles Board of Education member whose area includes parts of the northeast Valley. “But it’s good to see some improvements. I hope next year [scores] will be even higher.”

In two or three weeks, Los Angeles Unified School District officials said they will provide a detailed analysis of how different geographic regions fared on the Stanford 9. The Valley accounts for about a third of the LAUSD’s 700,000 students.

About 4.2 million California students in grades two through 11 took the Stanford 9 test this spring.

After a quick study of results from various high schools, Tokofsky said the Valley, particularly economically disadvantaged areas such as Pacoima and parts of Van Nuys, should be proud of their results compared with similar areas elsewhere in the city.

He praised the showing by students at San Fernando and Van Nuys high schools, and linked their relative success to a high degree of parental involvement.

“There’s a commitment to education,” he said.

The low reading scores in the upper grades might ultimately prove beneficial, Tokofsky said, if the district supports and offers more tutoring and intervention programs for middle and high school students.

“It’s good that the district has pushed them in the elementary schools, but we don’t want to give up on the older students,” he said. “It’s not too late.”

Indeed, the primary push has been in the elementary grades, with districts reducing classroom size, offering more academic intervention programs, involving parents and initiating various literacy reform efforts.

At Morningside Elementary School in San Fernando, students generally improved Stanford 9 scores despite a dip in fourth-grade reading. Second-graders, for instance, jumped 13 and 16 percentile points in reading and math, respectively, compared with last year’s second-graders.

Although students still hovered around the 30th percentile, Principal Nick Vasquez attributed gains to teacher commitment as well as a reading program that provides scripted lesson plans and draws on national reforms.

“We are feeling pretty good,” said Vasquez, who will spend the next week carefully studying results so he and his staff can determine what skills students need to work on. “It shows that our hard work is paying off.”

Besides practice tests and parent workshops, Morningside teachers also held a pep rally for students a few days before Stanford 9 began and, during the test, many played Baroque music softly. Vasquez said research shows the music facilitates learning.

“I think this helped a lot,” he said. “I went into different rooms. Where there was no music, kids had glazed eyes and teachers looked like ghosts. In the other rooms, everyone looked relaxed.”

Scores represent national percentile ranks for each grade, with a score of 50 being average.

At Lassen Elementary School in North Hills, which had a substantial composite gain of 10 percentile points, Principal Madelyne Coopersmith praised efforts by teachers, administrators and students for increasing overall scores from the 30th percentile last year to the 40th percentile this year.

Among their efforts were an after-school homework club and an extended learning program in which teachers worked twice a week with the school’s lowest-performing fourth- and fifth-graders.

Educators at Lockhurst Drive Elementary School in Woodland Hills said new classroom teaching methods and teacher training ideas may have helped boost scores. Lockhurst’s composite score (based on language, math and reading scores for grades two through five) jumped 11 points, from the 47th to the 58th percentile.

Principal Sandra Coffey said one key change at the school is that teachers at each grade level now meet weekly to plan instruction and share ideas. At those meetings, ideas are shared like the concept of second-graders tackling word “puzzles.”

Teacher Michelle Campbell said she first tried the idea with remedial students, but found it useful for all second-graders. Students are read a sentence, such as “The frog is in the pond.” That same sentence is cut up into separate words, put into a plastic bag, and given to a child who must rearrange the words into the original sentence.

To improve comprehension skills, teachers shared ideas on how to quiz children about what they were reading throughout a reading exercise instead of at the end of a passage.

After reading just a paragraph or a couple of pages, Campbell said teachers now periodically ask a child questions like “So where did Sally go?” “Who went to the mall?” and “Why did she go to the mall?”

Frequent practice tests helped kids shake off exam jitters, she said.

“We have the kids grade them, and talk immediately about errors,” said Campbell, who is also a mentor teacher. “All of our second-grade teachers did that every week, about twice a week. And then when we got closer to the test we did it even more.”

Some administrators Friday still did not know how their school fared, complaining of Internet access problems and delays in receiving hard copies of Stanford 9 test results for individual schools. Others said they are carefully double-checking scores in light of a statewide misclassification by Harcourt Educational Measurement, the private company that administered the test, of about 300,000 limited-English students. The glitch caused a three-week delay in releasing results.

Officials in the William S. Hart Union High School District in Santa Clarita said they’re almost certain errors exist.

Results show 10th-graders at Saugus High, a state distinguished school, scoring in the 35th percentile in reading; however, the same students, as ninth-graders, scored in the 54th percentile.

Districtwide this year, 10th-graders scored in the 69th percentile in social studies, whereas last year the same students scored in the 49th percentile.

“Does this mean that all the dumb kids left?” asked Gary Wexler, director of curriculum and assessment for Hart. “I don’t think so. There has to be mistakes, and given the history [of Harcourt Educational Measurement], I would not be surprised.”

Harcourt officials could not be reached for comment on the Saugus High results.

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Times staff writers Annette Kondo and Irene Garcia contributed to this story.

To check results by district or school, go to the California Department of Education Web site at www.cde.ca.gov.