Scores Get Principals Reassigned

Two Santa Ana principals have been reassigned after their schools turned in poor test scores, foreshadowing what could happen statewide next year to the leaders of low-performing schools.

The reassignments have prompted charges that it is unfair to link standardized test scores so closely with the fate of educators.

“The policy does not assist or support schools,” said Jan Boukather, who stepped down as principal of Hoover Elementary School in February, days after the Santa Ana school underwent an on-site evaluation that she considers unfair. “Instead of supporting an administrator or a staff, what that policy does is set in place a feeling of a punitive action.”

Used as part of California’s strong push toward accountability, the state’s Stanford 9 standardized test is, for now, the only measurement of school performance. Schools whose students score low and fail to improve can be taken over by the state, and their principals and teachers reassigned. The first of those reassignments could occur at the end of this next school year, as the program enters its third year.

But the Santa Ana Unified School District pushed forward with its own, similar program years ahead of the state--in fact, before the state started using the Stanford 9 test. Since statewide testing began, the district has used its scores as measurements of school performance and added the possibility of restructuring schools that failed to improve their scores, said Donald Stabler, associate superintendent.

District scores are traditionally low, with 70% of the students scoring below the mean in mathematics and more than 80% scoring low in language arts.

Under the district’s program, if a school fails to show appropriate improvement, a team of evaluators will conduct an on-site review. Based on the results, any or all staff members could be reassigned.

DeVera Heard was removed from Wilson Elementary School in late June after eight years as principal. She has been reassigned as principal of Community Day High School, one of the district’s alternative schools. Boukather, who asked to return to the classroom, will begin teaching first grade at Harvey Elementary School this month.

“It’s punitive; I don’t think its designed to be other than that,” Heard said.

Nobody argues that educators need to be held accountable for what they do, she said. “However, you want to make sure you follow due process. If there’s a problem, tell me there’s a problem and give me suggestions to correct it.”

The Stanford 9 scores at both affected schools were among the lowest in Santa Ana, a district where a majority of students live in poverty, are learning English and face other challenges that effect their education.

Supt. Al Mijares said the district was not attempting to be “condemnatory or unfair” in reassigning the principals.

“Our effort here was to say that there is nothing more important than student achievement,” he said, “and if it appeared as though a school was stuck, it became important for us to have the conviction to change that.”

The dissent in Santa Ana could foreshadow similar complaints elsewhere when programs for low-performing schools reach the point of reassigning staff members at the end of the coming school year.

In the state’s Immediate Intervention Under-Performing School Program, schools ranked below average on the Academic Performance Index can apply for extra funding to help bring up scores.

But heavy responsibility comes with that money. If schools that receive funding do not show the expected improvement in the next year, the state can take over the school in the third year and the state superintendent can appoint a different administrator.

Participation in the program is voluntary, said Doug Stone, a spokesman for the state Department of Education.

“It’s our belief that schools wouldn’t volunteer for the extra resources if they didn’t believe that they could not turn it around themselves,” Stone said.

Mijares called his district’s program a successful work in progress.

“Our scores have gone up consistently over the past four years,” he said. “We have grade levels that are now reaching the mean on a standardized test.”

But, he said, many of the district’s schools are still struggling.

Although principals Heard and Boukather said they support the program, they criticized the review process.

They said they weren’t given sufficient time for their staffs to prepare for the on-site evaluations, whose dates were changed three times. They also questioned the evaluators’ findings, and said they were not given an opportunity to discuss findings with the review team leader.

Heard said the report on Wilson Elementary School included general recommendations that were not helpful.

“We were already doing the majority of those things that were suggested, plus innovative things that weren’t even included in the report,” she said. “One of the findings was, indeed, look at all these things you have as hardships and barriers, and you’ve been able to move the kids forward.”

In fact, Heard said, her school’s staff members had each received $591 from the state in June for exceeding the Academic Performance Index target growth number on the Stanford 9 test for the 1999-2000 school year.

“The concern of staff members and parents was, if we’re doing what the state is asking, why are you not celebrating with us and offering every bit of support to make that continue?” she said.

School Faces Major Challenges

Although acknowledging that her school had the district’s lowest test scores, Boukather said the school’s Stanford 9 test scores actually rose last year by 17 points, just short of the 19 points assigned as its target for improvement.

Her school faces exceptional challenges, she said: Seventy-eight percent of Hoover’s students are at the poverty level, the average parent does not have a high school diploma, 77% of the students are learning English (with 35% in the bilingual program), and 95% of the students are bused in.

Overcrowding is also a factor--the school has 1,250 students in a facility built for 600. In addition, she said, nearly half the school’s teachers have been there for three years or less, and almost one-third are uncredentialed.

“And when you come into a school that is challenged with all these factors and you implement something that is punitive in nature,” she said, “that says to that administrator and to those staff members, ‘I cannot work hard enough or fast enough to make the progress that this district wants and I had better not work in this school.’ ”

“In other words, you’re going to lose administrators and lose staff if you are going to base performance only on the standardized test score.”

Mijares said Hoover and Wilson elementary schools were not chosen for on-site evaluations as a result of just one year’s performance but rather a three-year snapshot.

“If you look over a 3-year period,” he said, “you’ll see they were hovering right at the bottom or were on the bottom of all the 54 schools in our district.”

The evaluations, conducted by district and outside educators, consisted of looking at everything from how lesson plans are implemented to the learning environment, including school cleanliness. It also examined such factors as parental involvement and whether homework was assigned.

In naming new principals to the two schools, Mijares said, “We just felt we needed to give the schools a fresh start, and that’s what we are attempting to do right now.”

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Times staff writer Andrea Perera contributed to this report.