Schools Getting Higher Marks on Tests

Paced by gains in large urban districts, including Los Angeles Unified, California public schools continued to show steady progress in standardized test scores released Tuesday.

Statewide, 42% of students scored at the “advanced” or “proficient” level in English and 40% in math, an increase of 2 percentage points over last year’s scores in both subjects. State education officials acknowledged that the results left vast room for improvement, but hailed them as evidence that the effort to raise educational standards was gradually paying off.

“It is now clear that after almost 10 years of standards-based reforms ... education in California is clearly making meaningful, sustained improvement,” Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell said at a news conference in Glendale.

Los Angeles Unified, by far the state’s largest school district, showed gains on the STAR tests in almost every grade and subject area, with especially strong progress in the early grades, where the district has concentrated its reform efforts. Although the district’s scores remain well below the California average, they rose more than those of the state as a whole.

That offered validation to district officials who are trying to fend off a restructuring plan championed by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

The mayor agreed that the local results were impressive, even as he predicted that legislation giving him partial control of the district would win approval in Sacramento.

“I acknowledge some of the success. I don’t find that threatening in any way. It’s a good thing,” Villaraigosa told reporters at a City Hall news conference. “We applaud the school district. But make no mistake. This partnership is going to enhance that. It’s going to deepen it. You’re going to see even more success in the coming years.”

The picture was considerably more mixed at the middle- and high-school level, both in Los Angeles and statewide, with only modest or no increases in the percentage of students scoring proficient or better.

In high schools there was also an increase in the percentage of students scoring “far below basic,” suggesting a growing pool of those being left behind in the state’s push to raise educational standards.

Virtually no progress was made in closing the so-called achievement gap that separates affluent from poor children, and whites and Asian Americans from Latinos and African Americans. Those groups made roughly equal progress, leaving the gap about the same.

Russlynn Ali, executive director of Education Trust-West, a public policy group that focuses on school reform, said the test results are “actually cause for great concern” because of the disparities.

“In this state we provide poor kids and kids of color less of everything research says makes a difference,” Ali wrote in an analysis of the Standardized Testing and Reporting results. “If we’re serious about making the rhetoric on closing the gap a reality, then we need to do the opposite and provide them more.”

Both O’Connell and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger essentially agreed. O’Connell said he was “extremely disheartened” by the state’s inability to close the gap, and promised more counselors, training for teachers and other resources aimed at raising the achievement of poor children and children of color.

“Clearly, we must work harder, faster and with more focus to close the achievement gap,” he said.

O’Connell, reelected to a second term in June, said closing the gap would be his top priority over the next four years.

Schwarzenegger issued a statement saying the state “can and must do more to close the achievement gap in our underserved schools -- that is why I support increased tutoring and after-school programs, as well as getting more experienced teachers in schools that need the most help.”

Still, Schwarzenegger, O’Connell and other officials were mostly upbeat.

The standardized tests, which are aligned to the state’s curricular goals, will be used later this month to help determine the ranking of every school in the state under the Academic Performance Index, which forms the foundation of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Many teachers and parents complain that public schools have become fixated on tests, to the exclusion of more creative or individualized forms of learning. Advocates say that the tests have pushed schools to raise their standards and that the gains reflect real improvements in learning.

Besides Los Angeles, all the other large, urban districts analyzed by the state Department of Education showed improvement. San Francisco Unified was the highest scoring of the large city districts, with 48% of its students testing proficient or above in both English and math. San Bernardino had the lowest scores, with about 25% of its students considered proficient. Still, it showed improvement in both English and math. Riverside, Santa Ana and Corona-Norco showed smaller improvements.

Santa Ana Unified, the state’s fifth-largest school district, showed modest gains in English but stagnant, even faltering, math achievement in the upper grades.

“We’re making progress and we’re happy about that, but we want to be making more progress,” said Helen Stainer, assistant superintendent of elementary education in the nearly 63,000-student district.

Capistrano Unified, a high-achieving south Orange County district, is among those facing a pervasive achievement gap, in its case between white and Asian students and their Latino classmates. The problem is not that Latino students are falling behind, but that they are not improving faster than their counterparts, said Patrick Levens, executive director for secondary education support at the 50,000-student district.

“You’re taking baby steps,” Levens said. “The gap is narrowing slightly over time. We are making improvements in it, but the Asian and Anglo students are moving at high rates of improvement and the Hispanic kids have to really step on it to kind of keep the gap from widening. That’s a huge challenge for any district, especially one this large.”

Compton Unified, long considered one of the most troubled districts in the state, showed surprising gains at the elementary level, with second-graders jumping 10 percentage points in English proficiency and 7 in math. Supt. Jesse L. Gonzales credited a strong reform curriculum in the early grades, coupled with constant testing to assess progress.

The gains all but evaporate after elementary school, however. Gonzales acknowledged that reform efforts have been less consistent in secondary schools, but also said the district faces daunting social pressures. “All the problems of society manifest themselves in our classrooms, and they really begin in middle school,” he said.

The results in L.A. Unified were especially sweet for Supt. Roy Romer, who is retiring this fall. “We are on our sixth year since I’ve been here, and we have increased scores every year since I’ve been here, and that’s an extraordinary record for an urban district,” he said at a news conference Monday in Sacramento, where he was speaking at a Capitol hearing against Villaraigosa’s takeover plan.

Overall, 31% of the students in L.A. Unified tested proficient or better in math, up 2 percentage points from 2005, and 30% in English, up 3 points.

Romer noted that the percentage of second-graders who scored “proficient” or better in English rose 6 points over the previous year, and nearly doubled during his time in office, from 20% to 39%.

“That is really, really very strong growth,” he said.

More than half of L.A.’s second- and third-graders scored proficient or better in math, edging them close to the statewide average.

The test results also show that many more of the state’s middle- and high-school students are taking advanced math and science than was the case just a few years ago, but not always with success.

Robert Collins, L.A. Unified’s chief instructional officer for secondary schools, said nearly twice as many students took Algebra 2 last year than five years ago. But 72% of them scored “below basic” or “far below basic,” compared with 48% statewide.

Collins acknowledged that it would take time to boost performance in higher-level math and science. He said algebra scores should begin to improve this year, when roughly a third of L.A. Unified’s eighth-graders will be channeled into pre-algebra.

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Times staff writers Duke Helfand and Seema Mehta contributed to this report.