Stanford 9 Test Scores Are Up in Huntington

The first, anticipated batch of Orange County’s Stanford 9 test results landed Tuesday, with most scores for Huntington Beach high-school students creeping up a notch and hovering above the national average, except in reading.

Of Orange County’s 27 school districts, two--Huntington Beach Union and Fullerton Joint Union high school districts--reported receiving their scores from the publisher of the standardized test of basic skills. Only Huntington Beach, where about 10,100 pupils took the test, publicly released partial data Tuesday.

This year marks the second administration of the Stanford 9 exam, after a four-year standardized-testing drought when different school districts took different tests, making comparisons all but impossible. This spring, about 4.2 million California schoolchildren in grades two through 11 took Stanford tests.

Test scores--evaluating high-schoolers on reading, writing, math, spelling, social studies and science--figure prominently in the governor’s plan to rank California schools and financially penalize consistent underachievers.

Statewide results are not scheduled for public release until June 30. Scores dribble in piecemeal because test publisher Harcourt Educational Measurement holds contracts with each of California’s 1,000 school districts, as opposed to the state Education Department. Results arrive roughly in the order of testing.

In Huntington Beach, second-year results show slight improvement across the board, with most district scores in the 50th to 65th percentile.

Math proved the district’s strong suit, with scores reaching as high as the 73rd percentile. Social studies scores for the junior year, when students take American history, also were strong. Reading scores remained lower.

Percentiles rank students against a nationally selected group of peers. By definition, the 50th is the national average, with half the pool scoring higher and half scoring lower.

The uptick in scores was anticipated, said Linda MacDonell, director of instructional services for the Orange County Department of Education.

“We expected to see gradual improvement for two reasons,” she said. “In the second year, students have seen this test before. They know what to expect, they understand the format. Also, the anxiety initially caused by the test should be diminished. . . . I’m anticipating that we’ll see gains in all the districts in Orange County.”

Despite gains, reading scores continue to vex the high-achieving Huntington Beach schools. Those measurements did nudge upward, but scores still lagged in the 40th to 50th percentiles.

Reading scores were significantly lower--in the 20s--at Westminster High. About half of Westminster’s students do not speak English fluently, compared with 17% districtwide, making the all-English test particularly tough.

“We’ve done a few small things to help reading scores improve, because those tests are so darn hard for kids learning English,” said Jerry White, Huntington Beach’s director of curriculum. For example, teachers have been giving students more reading passages with comprehension questions. “I want to see us constantly increasing, but steadily. If you jump a lot in one year, that makes me suspicious.”

In general, Orange County and California schools have been at a scoring disadvantage in the test, because few other states have such high numbers of students who are not fluent in English.

Huntington Beach teachers will try to tackle reading difficulties with the help of a $140,000 state grant. The grant will pay for extra training in how to incorporate reading practice across all subject areas.

Besides the regular test subjects, many students this year also took “augmentation” exams--extra tests that are supposed to match better with the state’s rigorous new standards for math and language arts.

The augmentations are a new feature this year--an extra 70 questions, on top of the 380 core questions, designed by the Stanford 9 publisher to test students’ command of the state’s rigorous new standards for language arts and math.

The trouble is teachers haven’t yet received copies of the new standards and aren’t using them in the classroom. The result: a disconnect between what kids are learning and what the augmentation was asking. For example, second-graders were quizzed on division before they had learned it.

The augmentation results will be scored separately and are not blended into the overall scores sent home to parents. The augmentation results will be used as a baseline for future measurement.

Huntington Beach did not release its augmentation results Tuesday because they had not been evaluated. The results may prove hard to interpret because they are raw scores, not given in percentiles, or even as the percent students got right.

The statewide standardized test still has some glitches, conceded Doug Stone, a spokesman for the California Department of Education. As districts begin incorporating state standards into local classrooms, the augmentations should become easier for students.

* THE NUMBERS: A chart lists exam results for each school, grade and subject. B4

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First Test Results

Partial Stanford 9 test results in the Huntington Beach Union High School District show slight improvement in 1999 compared with 1998. Reading scores continue to be the district’s weak point, particularly those from Westminster High School. Westminster has the district’s largest concentration of students learning English as a second language--about half the student body. The following percentile listings show how scores ranked, on average, against a nationally selected group. A score in the 99th percentile, for example, is equal to or higher than all but 1% of the comparison group’s.

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Reading Math Language Science School Grade 1998 1999 1998 1999 1998 1999 1998 1999 Districtwide 9 42 45 62 65 60 61 54 56 10 40 41 59 62 47 49 56 57 11 44 43 59 61 52 53 55 56 Edison 9 53 52 66 68 66 68 63 63 10 50 50 63 62 57 58 65 64 11 52 48 66 65 60 61 65 66 Fountain Valley 9 51 53 72 72 69 70 64 63 10 48 48 67 73 59 60 65 68 11 51 49 68 72 61 63 63 63 Huntington Beach 9 45 51 61 67 60 64 57 59 10 48 47 65 63 53 56 59 57 11 51 50 63 65 56 55 62 59 Marina 9 48 52 67 69 66 63 58 59 10 48 48 65 65 56 54 65 63 11 52 52 62 69 59 60 62 63 Ocean View 9 37 42 54 61 57 58 43 50 10 30 38 47 58 39 43 40 52 11 41 38 52 54 51 48 48 49 Westminster 9 23 26 50 54 42 43 39 42 10 21 21 48 53 27 28 38 39 11 25 23 50 51 35 32 37 38

Social science School 1998 1999 Districtwide 51 53 48 48 64 65 Edison 64 62 61 60 75 73 Fountain Valley 60 58 56 56 72 71 Huntington Beach 49 55 50 49 67 66 Marina 54 57 53 53 71 72 Ocean View 47 50 39 44 60 63 Westminster 33 38 30 31 47 46

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Source: Huntington Beach Union High School District