HIGH STAKES FOR YOUNG TEST TAKERS

On a recent Sunday morning, a determined Spencer Cutrow spent three hours hunched over an admission exam designed to test his reading, math and reasoning skills, with its outcome likely to help determine how he will spend the rest of his academic career.

But Spencer, 10, is anticipating middle school, not college. Although the test, the Independent School Entrance Exam, may not mean anything to most people, taking it is a rite of passage for thousands of students applying to private schools in Los Angeles and around the country.

Much like the SAT, which is required for college admission, the independent schools entrance exam provokes almost frenzied anxiety for parents and students.

Most students take the test in the fifth or sixth grade, and for many it is their first high-stakes standardized test, required for entry into such highly regarded schools as Harbor Day School in Corona del Mar, Chandler School in Pasadena and Crossroads School in Santa Monica, which Spencer wants to attend.

Not wanting to see their children at a disadvantage, parents are spending hundreds -- sometimes thousands -- of dollars for one-on-one or small-group tutoring sessions, which have helped to fuel a rapid growth in services that cater to the private independent and parochial school market. (Most of the nation’s parochial high schools require the High School Placement Test, another competitive standardized test.)

The swirl of excitement and angst over the exams is heightened this month as many students take the test on January and February weekends. It rivals the tension for Ivy League aspirants, much to the chagrin of parents like Mary Cutrow, Spencer’s mom.

“I’m hearing from parents at school with older kids, and they’re going through exactly the same thing with college,” Cutrow said. “It’s almost the same conversations going back and forth. I actually think there’s less pressure with college, where you have hundreds of choices and kids apply to 10 schools. In L.A., there are only three or four top private schools.”

Independent schools adopted the exam more than a decade ago so students would not have to take different entrance tests at each school they applied to. Many school admissions directors say it is ironic that the single test now is causing more stress.

Some school administrators are beginning to question whether the test is worth all the fuss, and some fear that tutoring has skewed scores. They say they are basing admissions decisions more on the essay portion of the test, which is forwarded to schools without being scored.

Nationally, the number of students taking the Independent School Entrance Exam has grown from about 21,000 to more than 42,000 in the last decade, according to the Educational Records Bureau, a New York-based nonprofit organization that administers the test. Los Angeles has the largest number of students who take the exam: 3,560 did so in 2005, said Elizabeth Mangas, who oversees the test.

Most independent middle and high schools in Los Angeles use the exam. A different private school admissions test, the Secondary School Admission Test, is more widely used in Northern California and other parts of the country.

Adam Ingersoll, co-owner of Compass Education Group, a tutoring service with offices in Beverly Hills and Marin County, said the number of students seeking private in-home tutoring for the Independent School Entrance Exam tripled in the last year, mainly through word-of-mouth referrals. The test preparation is rigorous, with one or two 90-minute sessions each week -- not including homework -- for up to four months, and costs as much as $3,000.

His company also provides tutoring at schools, for which participating families pay group rates. The private Wesley School, a kindergarten through eighth-grade campus in North Hollywood, offered classes this year with about two-thirds of its eighth-graders participating, said director of admissions Verena Denove. Parents of the rest, she added, probably opted for individualized tutoring.

“The reality is, because it is so competitive, most parents are providing some sort of test preparation these days, and if they don’t, I think those kids are disadvantaged,” said Denove. “I don’t believe these classes can necessarily cram a kid’s brain full of a bunch of new information, but it allows them to feel that they are well prepared and that they can perform to the maximum of their ability.”

Jennifer Berman said the class appeared to help prepare her daughter Corey, a Wesley eighth-grader, who recently took both the independent and the parochial school placement tests. Corey is applying to Immaculate Heart, Notre Dame and Marymount high schools.

“There is a tremendous amount of pressure applying to high school,” Berman said. “We were of the mind-set that we wanted to make it as easy as possible on our kids, take off some of the pressure and leave nothing to chance.”

The scrutinizing and strategizing about the test has been honed to a high art by some parents. Later testing dates, for example, used to be more popular under the theory that students with even a few more months of academic preparation and maturity would do better. Now, many families try to get the test out of the way before the winter holidays.

“We took the test before winter break because we felt it wasn’t fair to make her have to prepare and study the first thing back,” said Bettina O’Mara, whose daughter Alana, 11, is applying to the Archer School for Girls. “Schools need to have the scores pretty much right after winter break, so you begin preparing 10 weeks before.”

The Independent School Entrance Exam, which costs $75, can be taken only once in a six-month period, and no practice tests are allowed. The test is written under the guidance of the Educational Testing Service, the nonprofit in Princeton, N.J., that also prepares and administers the SAT and Advanced Placement tests.

The test has three levels of difficulty: for fourth- and fifth-graders who are candidates for admission to grades five and six, for students in grades six and seven who are candidates for admission to seventh and eighth grades and for students in grades eight through 11 who are candidates for admission to grades nine through 12.

Among other fears of worried parents is that the exam tests above their child’s grade level, although school officials discount those concerns.

Elizabeth Gregory, director of admissions at Harvard-Westlake School, said the exam score is one of many factors by which applicants are judged. Others include students’ grades and teachers’ comments.

“We’re aware that it’s only one day in the life of a young student who probably has never taken a test like this before,” Gregory said. “But I do think the ISEE is very predictive of whether or not someone is going to be academically successful at our school, or we wouldn’t use it.”

For highly competitive schools that may get hundreds of applications for a few open spots, the exam is the one common factor for applicants.

At Crossroads, applications for the sixth grade have increased the last three years, from 98 in 2005 to 145 this year.

At the Brentwood School, admissions director Keith Sarkisian expects to receive more than 300 applications for 70 seventh-grade spots and more than 150 for the 10 to 15 ninth-grade spots open next fall.

Sarkisian said the exam is not the most critical component at Brentwood, even if some parents might think otherwise.

“We’ve been noticing that applicant families are beginning to see the entrance exam as the be-all and end-all,” he said. “We’ve seen through anecdotal evidence that a lot of sixth-grade curriculum at independent schools is being geared to prepping for the test. It all just puts a false sense of importance on the exam.”

Paul Kanarek, who owns the Princeton Review of Southern California, a test prep firm, agrees. Kanarek is an outspoken opponent of standardized tests, arguing that they don’t measure natural ability. He says he divulges strategies for beating the exams as a thumb in the eye to the test makers.

Helping to drive the pressure is an increasing segment of the middle class dissatisfied with public school options, he said.

That was the case with the Cutrows. Spencer, a fifth-grader at public Warner Elementary School near Westwood, has an older brother at Crossroads and another brother at Brentwood.

The Cutrow boys are exceptions because none took test preparation courses. Their mother said the boys have always excelled on standardized tests and were urged to treat the entrance exam like any other.

Spencer, who plays the piano, swims, plays basketball and writes for an online youth magazine, looked over a practice test. He admitted to being a bit nervous because he knew the exam was more important than others he’s taken. The excitement of his classmates, many of whom were also taking the test, didn’t help.

“A lot of people were just going crazy about it,” he said. But his confidence paid off: He scored in the 98th percentile on three sections of the test and in the 84th percentile on the fourth.

“It was just studying and knowing what to expect ahead of time,” he said. “The math turned out to be easier than I thought it would be. I felt very good when I got the grades, pretty proud of myself.”

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carla.rivera@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Doing the math

Here are sample math questions from the Independent School Entrance Exam.

For fifth- and sixth-grade admission:

1. Which of the following is closest to 1?

A) 1.5

B) 1.2

C) 0.9

D) 0.1

For seventh- and eighth-grade admission:

2. What are the two different prime factors of 45?

A) 3 and 5

B) 3 and 9

C) 5 and 9

D) 3 and 15

For ninth- through 12th-grade admission:

3. Ben has 4 more marbles than Steve. Ann has twice as many marbles as Ben. If s is the number of marbles that Steve has, then in terms of s, how many marbles does Ann have?

A) 2s

B) 2s + 2

C) 2s + 4

D) 2s + 8

Answers: 1. C, 2. A and 3. D

Source: 2006-07 ISEE Student Guide