The Dirty Little Secret of the Stanford 9

School by school, grade by grade, the Stanford 9 results are in. Newspapers across the state dutifully publish the scores. Aha, say the governor and state legislators, now we can measure and compare how our schools are doing.

The three high school girls sitting across from me can only laugh at that. In fact, they are laughing. Laughing as they describe what went on the week last spring when they took the tests.

Their report from the front lines of California educational testing leaves me with one conclusion: The system needs fixing.

The girls, ages 15, 16 and 17, describe a week of Stanford 9 testing at their Orange County high school as one in which most students and teachers doubted the tests measured much of anything.

They describe a scene where students openly compared answers--with a proctor sitting nearby--or, more likely, where students glided through the five 2 1/2-hour sessions marking whatever multiple-choice answer they felt like.

Now, before you recoil at their confessions, take note that the three girls are in advanced-placement classes.

They aren’t delinquents who blow off school. They’re just in on the dirty little secret that many high schoolers look with disdain on the Stanford 9 tests, the very same tests to which legislators and the governor are determined to peg our tax dollars.

For obvious reasons, the girls don’t want to be identified. Two will be seniors this year, the third a sophomore. The mother of one of them sits in on our conversation.

Why such contempt for the tests?

“They don’t have any effect on our grades; they’re not going to help us get into a college. They’re just to show how our schools are doing,” the 15-year-old says.

Another girl says it’s even more calculated than that. Honors students get a full plate of standardized tests during a school year (not to mention their regular classroom tests), and they’ve decided--almost like group-think--that the Stanford 9 is one that can be sacrificed.

We adults would call that prioritizing.

‘What’s the Point?’

One girl said she took the test seriously for about five minutes, then realized that “everybody in class had started talking and it was sort of like, ‘What’s the point?’ ”

On one test, she recalls asking the boy sitting next to her if he “knew the answer to No. 1.”

The proctor, one of the school’s coaches, was six feet away. “He might not have been paying attention,” she says, “but we weren’t trying to hide it. We were very obvious.”

These girls aren’t slackers. One of them says of another: “She won’t even hang out with us on weekends sometimes, so she can study. It’s not that she’s the kind of person who doesn’t care about school.”

I ask the one girl’s mother if these stories bother her. She says no, because she knows her daughter spends lots of time studying.

Instead, her mother asks why the state puts so much significance on tests that students don’t take seriously.

The girls have other test-related gripes. For example, their school has a significant percentage of students with limited English-speaking ability. That hurts their school’s test scores and paints an inaccurate portrait of the school’s academic quality, they say.

Referring to the much-touted connection between test scores and financial rewards to schools that score well, one of the girls says:

“We don’t have enough money for everyone in class to have a book, so we have to share. We can’t improve test scores until we get money, and we can’t get money until we improve our test scores. It’s a vicious cycle.”

The girls’ story doesn’t shock Bill Habermehl, the county’s associate superintendent of schools. There’s no reason, he says, to consider it an aberration.

Testing is here to stay, but Habermehl says a wider range of a student’s record would be a better benchmark. He also notes that the Stanford 9 probably has more validity at the elementary school level, where students aren’t old enough to rebel against it.

Habermehl won’t decry the girls’ confessional; in fact, he says he understands their thinking. He wishes students would take Stanford 9 seriously, but once they realize it doesn’t affect their grade average, college chances or job opportunities, it’s tough to convince them it matters, he says.

If the state dispenses money based on test scores, don’t bogus scores lead to bogus expenditures?

Meanwhile, as taxpayers wait with bated breath for Stanford 9 results, students laugh them off.

How long did you spend on the 2 1/2-hour test, I ask one of the girls.

“About 45 minutes,” she says. “I read ‘Moby Dick’ the rest of the time.”

*

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com