School Districts Expect Better State Test Scores

As officials prepare for this week’s release of statewide school test results, early indications are that educators in many parts of California are about to get a rare bolt of good news.

Districts that have received their scores early--ranging from Sacramento to Orange County--are reporting improvements, sometimes substantial ones, compared with last year. This is the second year in a row that the state has given the Stanford 9. Experts note that scores almost always improve in the first few years a test is given as students and teachers become more familiar with it. But many of the gains being reported appear to go beyond what simple repetition would have produced.

Rising scores are likely to strengthen the argument for maintaining the state’s current course on education policy: more accountability based on testing coupled with an emphasis on basic skills such as phonics instruction in the lower grades.

At the same time, an improving picture statewide is likely to increase the pressure on those districts that continue to lag or resist the state’s direction.

And if the improvements hold up when the full statewide set of scores becomes public, the results would be an important boost for Gov. Gray Davis, who has publicly staked his reelection on improving the state’s public schools. Although the Democrat’s own education reforms will not begin to take effect until next school year, he is likely to gain politically from any uptick in results.

(This year’s scores will be published on the California Department of Education’s Web site, https://www.cde.ca.gov. State officials are required by law to post the scores by midnight Wednesday. The Times plans to publish a cross-section of scores from schools in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties.)

The stakes for the statewide exams given in the public schools have been high since the testing program began last year. Some districts will use the scores to determine which children get to move up a grade and which schools will need crisis funding to bolster instruction.

But the Stanford 9 assumed even heftier significance with the passage this spring of California’s latest round of education reform measures.

“This is the beginning of the high-stakes accountability system,” said Ron Dietel, director of communications for the federally funded Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at UCLA. “It is really important, particularly for a parent, to get as much information as possible. We just have to get the process right.”

The centerpiece of that accountability system is an academic performance index, which will use test scores to rank California’s 8,000 schools. The unprecedented ordering will launch Davis’ ballyhooed push for accountability, with the idea that performance will dictate which schools merit rewards and which deserve sanctions.

“The Legislature, the governor and our communities expect us to give them some measure of how well students are performing, and we’re going to deal with it--not complain about it,” said Bill Habermehl, assistant superintendent at the Orange County Department of Education.

“We’ll be much like businesses that every quarter have to report how they’re doing to the stock market,” Habermehl said. “That’s a tough analogy to give to schools, but that’s the kind of society we live in today. People want results.”

One unintended consequence of the law is that, for at least a few years, the ranking will be determined solely by results on the Stanford 9 and on blocks of additional test items aimed at assessing students’ knowledge of the state’s rigorous new content standards for reading, math and, later, science and history.

Some Statistics Not Yet Available

Two other statistics that were intended to be part of the formula--graduation and attendance rates--do not yet exist. Officials are scrambling to devise methods of compiling them but acknowledge that reliable figures are years away.

California is far from alone in relying on testing to judge how well students and schools are doing. To remain eligible for federal funds designed to aid low-income schools, all states by next year must develop statewide standards, multiple assessment methods and an accountability program.

Among the 41 states that have such programs in place, test scores have emerged as the key measure. That is true “no matter how much they say other indicators have a good deal of weight,” said Judie Mathers, a policy analyst with the Education Commission of the States, a nonprofit group in Denver that helps develop education policies.

Still, even Harcourt Educational Measurement, which publishes the Stanford 9, said test scores should be considered just one piece of a bigger puzzle.

“There’s so much that goes into the mix,” said Joanne M. Lenke, the company’s president. “Test scores give one picture, but there are other pictures to be taken.”

In California, one problem is that schools are accumulating an ever-mutating mix of scores, making valid comparisons difficult.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, instituted the Stanford 9 in 1997, a year before much of the rest of the state. Last year, it used a newer version of the exam. This year, some students with limited English-speaking proficiency took a Spanish-language test called the SABE/2. Students also had to answer questions reflecting academic standards set by California.

“Statisticians are going to say we’re comparing rocks and giraffes,” Mathers said. “California has to be able to commit to five years [of results]. And until we get 15 years of data from any state, we can’t say this works.”

That’s small consolation for schools that fear being labeled underachievers when accountability gets into full swing next year. Under the law, the state is required to take over low-performing schools that do not meet improvement targets, which are still under discussion.

Meanwhile, under the accountability law this year, eligible schools with low test scores for 1998 and 1999 may apply for funds to help identify and implement changes intended to boost performance.

Given the stakes--and the flaws that even backers of the tests admit--it is no surprise that the Stanford 9 has elicited strong emotions.

Consider the many steamed teachers who unleashed their anger to United Teachers-Los Angeles, a 40,000-member union.

Many bemoaned the length of the test. Others termed it “ludicrous” that bewildered students with limited or no English skills had to take the test in English.

Still others noted that the “augmentation” portions of the test--the extra questions intended to weigh pupils’ knowledge of the rigorous content standards--were mismatched with current curricula.

In some cases, teachers reported, even gifted children bolted from classrooms in tears when confronted with alien test material. The emotional turmoil, teachers warned, could give rise to test phobia among bright and struggling learners alike.

As one elementary school teacher complained: “All of my students, even my most dedicated, stopped caring about what they were doing after the first half-hour. They started [filling] in any answer just to get the test over with.”

With so much of a school’s reputation riding on the test results, however, some districts are taking steps to stamp out the haphazard bubble-filling they say may be bringing down their scores.

Juniors in the Saddleback Valley district, which includes Mission Viejo, Lake Forest, Foothill Ranch, Laguna Hills and Rancho Santa Margarita, will not be promoted to 12th grade next year if they score below the 33rd percentile in any subject.

Saddleback Supt. Peter Hartman said talks with students convinced him that many see the test as a joke.

“They tell me of friends who take it as a game, just scribbling in anything because they just want to get through it and get out,” Hartman said.

District officials also are considering whether to put Stanford 9 scores on graduates’ diplomas or include them on transcripts sent to colleges.

“We’ve got to somehow let the students know you’ve got to take the tests seriously.”

Over several days of Stanford 9 testing at Fullerton schools, Nathan LaBelle, 15, and his brother, Isaac, 12, “at times came home discouraged,” said Rebecca LaBelle, their mother. Nathan, who was studying algebra, guessed at questions on trigonometry, calculus and statistics and managed to get half of them right, but his mother questioned the validity of such results.

“I think testing is good so we can find out where our children are,” she said. “But if they haven’t been taught the material, why bother?”

Even school districts with stellar scores find flaws in the Stanford 9. In Irvine, where test scores routinely lodge in the highest percentiles, officials disdain the social science and science portions of the test.

“The science portion tests a 1940s kind of program with an emphasis on memorized facts,” Dean Waldfogel, Irvine superintendent of curriculum and instruction. “It doesn’t test good scientific thinking. And the social science part is not in good alignment with the state framework.”

Separate Reporting of Scores Challenged

Still, the complaints did not approach last year’s hullabaloo, a legal challenge over the separate reporting of scores of limited-English students that delayed by several weeks the release of statewide results.

Particularly in large urban districts, such as Los Angeles Unified, officials worry that the results of thousands of students who have not yet mastered English will drag down overall scores. (All students, regardless of their time in this country, were required to take the test in English; Spanish-speaking students who were enrolled in public school for less than 12 months also took the SABE/2, the Spanish-language test.)

And because of the demographics of California schools--high rates of poverty and of highly transient students with limited English skills--it is unrealistic to expect too much too soon, said Joan Herman, associate director of the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing.

“To put schools on a doomed list based on test scores alone is not a good idea,” Herman said.

But despite the criticisms, education officials tend to agree that the state should continue trying to refine and repair the system while it’s operating.

“Testing reliability is not yet where we want it to be,” wrote state Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin in a letter sent to parents along with student test scores. “Please help California stay the course on standards-based education.”