California Ranks Second to Last in U.S. Reading Test

California ranked second to last among 39 states in a new federal assessment of fourth-grade reading skills, which revealed Thursday that only 20% of the students are considered proficient readers.

Only Hawaii had a lower average score than California on the National Assessment of Educational Progress last year.

California tied with Louisiana for last in reading in 1994, the last time the test was given--an embarrassing performance that set off billions of dollars in education reforms.

State officials, disappointed by the latest results, said the fourth-graders who took the test last year did not benefit from reforms that have only recently begun to take hold in classrooms, such as reduced class sizes in primary grades and more phonics in textbooks.

“The scores are unacceptably low,” said Delaine Eastin, the state superintendent of public instruction. “We simply must do a better job of teaching our children this most essential skill.”

Thursday’s report also showed that in California:

* Eighty percent of fourth-graders are not “proficient” readers, meaning they do not have a solid command of challenging reading materials. That figure has remained consistent since 1992, when the U.S. Department of Education began tracking state-by-state results. Nationally, 29% of fourth-graders are proficient readers.

* Fifty-two percent of fourth-graders in the nation’s most populous state scored below the “basic” level, meaning they had failed to even partially master fundamental skills.

* There were striking differences among racial and ethnic groups. Nearly one-third of white and Asian fourth-graders met the proficient level last year, while just 7% of blacks and 8% of Latinos met that goal. The gaps remained consistent over time.

* Fourth-graders in suburbia outperformed their counterparts in inner cities and rural areas--a trend mirrored nationally. And as in the rest of the country, girls did better than boys.

* Overall, the new fourth-grade scores showed a 5-point improvement over 1994 scores, which had dipped from 1992. The new scores pulled the state back to 1992 levels.

The test was administered last year to fourth-, eighth- and 12th-graders nationally. Year-to-year comparisons among the states were provided only for fourth grade. No results were released for 12th-graders.

Average eighth-grade scores for last year showed that California ranked 33rd out of 36 states, above only Hawaii, Louisiana and Mississippi. This is the first year that eighth-grade scores have been released for individual states.

Only 22% of California eighth-graders were deemed proficient readers.

Gov. Gray Davis said the results underscored the critical need to press ahead with his education reforms.

Davis is seeking to improve performance by creating reading academies for struggling students, instituting peer review for teachers, ranking schools and requiring high school exit exams.

“We must not fail an entire generation of children,” Davis said in a statement.

The highest performer in the nation, based on average fourth-grade scores, was Connecticut, followed by Montana and New Hampshire. Some states improved their scores significantly, including Colorado, which improved by 9 points on the 500-point scale from its 1994 score, and Louisiana, which picked up 7 points.

Experts say California’s scores were influenced by several factors, including large class sizes, high rates of poverty, vast numbers of English learners and classrooms staffed by teachers with little or no experience.

A quarter of California’s 5.8 million students have limited English skills, and 10% of the state’s 270,000 instructors--or about 27,000 teachers--are working under emergency credentials, many in classrooms created by class-size reduction, the state reports.

Even so, California performed worse than comparable states such as Texas, which has a large immigrant population but whose average fourth-grade scores ranked 16th out of 39 states.

In Texas, 29% of those students read proficiently, which matches the national average and is 9 points higher than California.

Analysts say the difference lies in consistency. In recent years, Texas has instituted an accountability system for schools and a single statewide test to gauge student performance.

By contrast, California has flip-flopped from one assessment to another, leaving no consistent measure of progress. The state began using the Stanford 9 exam last year, the third testing program in a decade.

The state only adopted language arts standards in November 1997, and a system of school accountability is part of Davis’ reform package now being weighed in the Legislature.

Perhaps most troubling has been California’s tendency to embrace fads.

Teachers, education professors and others have spent most of the last decade fighting over how to teach children to read--whether through the literature-intensive “whole language” approach or by using the letter-sound techniques of phonics.

The state has sought to settle that dispute by stressing the need for both strategies in effective early reading programs. But that message is just now filtering into school districts as they begin to apply the new state standards.

“Around the country, California is known for not sticking with any single reform, for its fits and starts,” said Bob Linn, an education professor at the University of Colorado and co-director of the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing.

“Texas is exemplary in terms of staying the course. At least they have stuck with it. They deserve credit for boosting achievement.”

Linn and other experts said that California finally appears to be on the right track.

But the experts and education officials alike agreed that reform takes time, particularly in a state with 1,000 school districts, 8,000 schools and more students than the entire populations of some states.

“We’re all impatient, with good reason, but top-down changes don’t happen overnight,” Eastin said. “You have to get the word to the superintendents and school boards and teachers. People want instant results. I wish we could get them.”

California’s education secretary, Gary K. Hart, urged teachers to use the test scores as a further wake-up call for change. He said a large part of the solution lies in the new legislative package that keeps the focus on reading.

“We should not say that because we’ve had modest progress that’s reason to congratulate ourselves,” Hart said. “We need to build upon the actions that have been taken in the recent past. I hope these test scores will impress upon everyone the importance of this reform package.”

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Score Differences

The following chart shows the percentage of California public school fourth-graders who are proicient readers, based on a national test of reading skills.

Asian: 31%

White: 29%

California average: 20%

Latino: 8%

Black: 7%

Source: National Center for Educational Statistics

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The Scores by State

California fourth-graders ranked second to last in a nationwide assessment of reading skills given last year. Below are the average scores for each of the 39 states that participated in the test.

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State 1992 1994 1998 Connecticut 222 222 232 Montana -- 222 226 New Hampshire 228 223 226 Maine 227 228 225 Massachusetts 226 223 225 Wisconsin 224 224 224 Iowa 225 223 223 Minnesota 221 218 222 Kansas -- -- 222 Colorado 217 213 222 Oklahoma 220 -- 220 Wyoming 223 221 219 Rhode Island 217 220 218 Kentucky 213 212 218 Virginia 221 213 218 Michigan 216 -- 217 North Carolina 212 214 217 Texas 213 212 217 Washington -- 213 217 West Virginia 216 213 216 Missouri 220 217 216 New York 215 212 216 Maryland 211 210 215 Utah 220 217 215 Oregon -- -- 214 Tennessee 212 213 212 Delaware 213 206 212 Alabama 207 208 211 South Carolina 210 203 210 Georgia 212 207 210 Arkansas 211 209 209 Nevada -- -- 208 Arizona 209 206 207 Florida 208 205 207 New Mexico 211 205 206 Mississippi 199 202 204 Louisiana 204 197 204 California 202 197 202 Hawaii 203 201 200

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California ranks slightly higher in percentage of students who are proficient readers. Here are the states with the highest and lowest percentages.

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% of students at or above proficiency State 1992 1994 1998 Connecticut 34 38 46 New Hampshire 38 36 38 Montana -- 35 37 Massachusetts 36 36 37 Maine 36 41 36 Nevada -- -- 21 California 19 18 20 Louisiana 15 15 19 Mississippi 14 18 18 Hawaii 17 19 17

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Source: National Center for Education Statistics