Learning How to Use Results Intelligently

They don’t call them “high stakes” tests for nothing.

California’s standardized test results will drive some parents to cheer their children, and others to fret about them. Schools will gain or lose prestige and money. In extreme cases, administrators may lose their jobs, and schools their autonomy. The state has the authority to step in and take them over.

The results will be used by civil rights lawyers to gauge social justice, by parents to select new neighborhoods, by real estate agents to adjust home prices and by politicians to trumpet successes.

But perhaps the most important thing the scores will do is arm parents with pointed questions, said Mary Perry, deputy director of EdSource, a Palo Alto-based education think tank.

“If scores are down, I want to ask: What is the school doing to address the problem?” Perry said.

Among the stated purposes of the exams is providing a common language for parents and educators, engaging families, and empowering them to be critical of their children’s schools, Perry said.

But sometimes that “common language” requires translation: Although many people talk about the scores, and use them for their purposes, few can explain exactly what they mean.

In fact, the state’s testing program involves a complex, sometimes confusing, mixture of information.

Although schoolchildren in grades 2 through 11 seem to take one test each spring, they actually are taking two--sometimes three--tests simultaneously.

Most familiar, perhaps, is the Stanford 9 exam, which allows parents to compare individual student and school achievement with a national sample of test takers.

But another group of tests, which measure students’ performance according to objective California academic standards, is becoming increasingly important. The scores show how well students are mastering key subjects that the state believes they need to grasp.

A third element is the Spanish Assessment of Basic Education test, given to a relatively small number of Spanish-speaking students who have been at their current schools for less than a year.

Compared to the Stanford 9, educators say, the California standards tests are a more rigorous and precise measure of how well students and schools are performing in language arts and math, and in the upper grades, in science and social studies. Students deemed “proficient”--meaning they have mastered the standards--are believed to be gaining the skills they will need at a four-year college.

“California’s standards are among the most challenging in the country,” said Matt Gandal, executive vice president of Achieve Inc., a national education consulting group, which has advised several states on standards. “They spent a lot of time in California looking around the world and at other states to find the best standards.”

California is one of the few states that developed specific standards for each grade level well before a federal requirement for such tests was signed into law in January. As time goes on, scores on the standards tests will become crucial in determining schools’ official progress, as well as monetary rewards and sanctions.

This is the first year that California has reported students’ proficiency levels based on standards exams in math, science and history. The state began reporting proficiency in language arts last year.

“Now the tests correspond with what California says students should know, and the textbooks the state adopted should follow as well,” said Brian Stecher, an education researcher at the Rand Corp. think tank in Santa Monica. “This brings more coherence to all of the signals that are being sent to students, to teachers and to parents about what students should know.”

This year, the state Department of Education has tried to simplify the test results that go to parents.

The standards scores are sorted into five categories: “far below basic,” “below basic,” “basic,” “proficient” and “advanced.”

“Parents just need to get used to a different vocabulary,” Stecher said. “Rather than having numbers that indicate how well their student has done, they’ll have a descriptive phrase and they’ll be able to ask teachers to get some idea whether their children are making progress.”

Educators say the test scores often open an important dialogue between parents and teachers.

“We start by explaining the whole focus of these tests and that they are just one measure of assessment,” said Principal Angel Barrett of Plummer Elementary School in North Hills.

“We explain the Open Court reading program. We explain the math program. And we start looking at the different factors that make up the composite picture of the child.”

Such discussions can clear up misconceptions.

“We get a lot of parents asking what the scores mean,” said Caroline Brumm, director of student program evaluation in the Burbank Unified School District. “Many people come and their child is in the 60th percentile range [on the Stanford 9] and they are worried that their kids only answered 60% of the questions right.”

In fact, such a score would mean that the child scored better than or as well as 60% of those who took the test.

One of the most confusing aspects of this year’s scores may be reconciling Stanford 9 scores with the results of standards-based tests. In many cases, a student, district or school may have improved performance on the Stanford 9 but still not be proficient according to the objective state standards. The tests simply measure different things.

In any case, parent Rodolfo Lara, whose 10-year-old daughter goes to Wonderland Elementary in Hollywood, said the test results have reinforced his desire to become involved at her school. A roofer by trade, Lara had a slow year and spent much of his free time volunteering in his daughter’s class.

“Because I was at her school so much, I could just reexplain things to her [later] when she got lost,” Lara said.

He said that explains why her Stanford 9 results this year went way up. “I thought she would do better, but wow, I didn’t know she was going to do this much better; it taught me that helping out does pay off.”

Wendy Klivans of Tustin Ranch in Orange County said that her two daughters’ test results were far easier to understand this year and more meaningful because of the stronger emphasis on California’s standards.

“I like the fact that this year’s reference to state standards was clear and easy to see,” she said. “And it was good to see how my daughters fit into the state standards. That was exciting.”

Klivans said her daughters--one a third-grader at Tustin’s Ladera Elementary School, the other a fifth-grader at Peters Canyon Elementary--did well on tests and surpassed last year’s scores.

Klivans added, however, that she was concerned that many children were feeling pressure to perform well on the tests.

“My daughter thought these tests were going to keep her out of college,” Klivans said. “And she was only in fourth grade.”

On a larger scale, educators and public officials, from teachers, to principals, superintendents and state leaders, are also feeling pressure.

In January, the Los Angeles Unified School District removed several top administrators at four schools, in part because their student bodies did not meet mandated test-score improvements. Other districts, including San Diego, Oakland, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and many districts in Texas, have taken similar measures against principals for low test scores.

Los Angeles schools Supt. Roy Romer made much of improved Stanford 9 scores in L.A. Unified when the district released them last week, describing those results as “spectacular evidence of growth” during a crowded news conference that was attended by Gov. Gray Davis. Romer held no news conference to announce the California standards test results, which showed Los Angeles trailing the rest of the state.

Davis has staked his political career on better test scores, saying he would not run for reelection if they did not improve during his watch.

Under the new federal No Child Left Behind law, states must ensure that all schools perform at a proficient level--according to their state’s standards--within 12 years or they could lose federal funds for poor children.

Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said he will parse the scores for more proof that the state is “not providing enough resources to underperforming schools.”

The ACLU is in the midst of a 2-year-old lawsuit seeking to force the state to ensure “minimal educational standards” for California students.

And Jeanne St. Clair, the president of Pacific West Assn. of Realtors, said that she and most of her colleagues will be using the scores to market homes.

“School test scores, in general, do affect the real estate market,” St. Clair said. “People want to be in an area where the scores are high.”

Regardless of how much rests on the test scores, educators say parents should be aware that the scores are only one way to evaluate academic performance. EdSource’s Perry said the test is just a snapshot in time.

“The child could just be a bad test taker, or she could have had the flu, or their dog could have died that morning,” she said. “It is just one piece of information.”

Rand’s Stecher said the test overlooks many of the most important aspects of a school.

“Music and arts programs, and science in the elementary grades, are not even tested,” Stecher said.

“The social and psychological benefits of a school, how well a school is teaching kids to care about learning and to work together--these things don’t show up in test scores.”