O.C. Students Improve Stanford 9 Scores; 58% Beat National Average

Orange County students continued to make steady gains on the Stanford 9 tests and outperformed their peers statewide for the fifth year in a row, but the results for individual schools, made public Thursday, were a mixed bag.

According to a Times analysis, 58% of Orange County’s second-to 11th-graders who took the test last spring scored at or above the national average. The number was 49% in 1998, the first year the test was administered.

Statewide, about half of the students scored at or above the national average, up from 42% four years ago.

Local education officials hailed the results as a sign that the county is on the right track.

“It is another indicator that our schools are focused on the right things,” said Orange County Supt. William M. Habermehl. The teachers “are not teaching to the tests, they are teaching content, so when the students take the tests they are doing well.”

Teachers at John Marshall Elementary School in Westminster agreed. The school saw its Stanford 9 test results soar 32.8 percentage points in four years. Nearly 60% of Marshall students tested performed at or above the national average last spring, according to the Times analysis.

Having a curriculum in which classes are made relevant to state academic standards was the key factor in the school’s success, teachers said.

“We teach only to the standards now,” said fifth-grade teacher Diana Johnson, who will be in her 33rd year of teaching at Marshall when school starts Thursday. “There’s nothing wasted.”

In the staff workroom Thursday, first-grade teacher Chi Carr was trimming paper letters for her classroom’s Accelerated Reading bulletin board. The program awards students points for reading books based on their difficulty, which teachers credit with raising comprehension at the school, where 76% of the students are still learning English.

“We’re giving them the tools to prepare for the test,” Carr said.

Despite the teachers’ best efforts, the annual report on who’s ahead and who’s behind on the academic race can feel like a roller coaster ride for some schools, and a marathon for others.

Schools are praised one year for making gains, and castigated the next for slipping back.

A Scores Roller Coaster

Lambert Elementary School in Tustin showed some of the greatest gains in the county on the Stanford 9 tests the first two years. Last year it showed a steep fall. This year the school was up again, with 38% of its students tested scoring at or above the national average.

On Thursday, Principal Janet Bittick was already looking to next year. Teachers and administrators are getting ready to examine their latest performance, she said, to answer the question “What have we done well, and what do we need to keep plugging away at?”

Capistrano Unified School District, which has some of the highest-performing schools in the county, will be doing the same. About 72% of the district’s students performed at or above the national average, virtually the same as last year.

“When you reach a certain level, there’s only so many years in a row you can improve before you level off or slip,” said Capistrano Unified Supt. James A. Fleming, who compared his district to a marathon runner on the last leg of a race. “There’s a natural feeling of disappointment, but you have to remain focused and find new ways to improve.”

Officials at Melbourne A. Gauer Elementary in Anaheim have searched for years for ways to improve. The school, with a high percentage of low-income students and children still learning English, has never had more than 39% of its pupils testing at or above the national average.

Despite the odds, the school nonetheless made gains in other educational areas and qualified for state awards given to schools showing improvement.

Gauer’s experience illustrates the complexity of measuring achievement in this era of school accountability, officials said. And things are likely to get more complicated.

The Stanford 9 is a multiple-choice exam that tests skills in math, language and sciences and then compares individual results against the performance of a national sample of students.

In 1999, the state also began adding other standardized exams, now called the California Standards Test, which are designed to gauge how well students are mastering the state’s academic curriculum in multiple subjects.

Both tests are part of the state’s Standardized Testing and Reporting Program, STAR, and the cornerstone of California’s school accountability plan.

Dueling Test Results

Thursday’s California Standards Test results show most of those same well-performing Orange County students have a way to go before they are deemed proficient in subjects such as English language arts and mathematics. Overall, less than half of the students were proficient in those subjects, according to Thursday’s results.

“It is confusing to people,” Habermehl said. “They are looking at the [Stanford 9] results and we are doing a great job, and then they look at the [California Standards Test] and, wow, we are not doing so well.”

The stakes are high. Under STAR, improving schools qualify for cash prizes from the state, and those who consistently lag behind risk sanctions.

The federal government will also start tying grants to student performance on standardized tests as part of the No Child Left Behind Act, which became law this year.

Some officials are concerned about testing saturation.

“I hope the public understands they have to be patient with the system,” said Al Mijares, superintendent of the Santa Ana Unified School District, the largest in the county.

The district has steadily improved its Stanford 9 scores. Last spring, 32% of its students rated at or above the national average, up from 21% four years ago.

But like other county students, Santa Ana pupils performed poorly on the California Standards Test, which Mijares and others say has some of the highest academic standards in the nation.

The state will replace the Stanford 9 next year with another, similar exam and shift emphasis to the California Standards Test when assessing schools.

“In any industry, if you change the rules every few years, you will have some problems,” Mijares said. “That is what is being asked of public schools.”