County Schools Rise to State’s Standards : Local Officials Call Topping of New Goals a ‘Notable Achievement’

Most San Diego County high schools are meeting a majority of statewide performance standards in areas ranging from enrollment in English, mathematics and science courses to standardized test scores and aptitude among college-bound students, county school officials said Friday.

The performance guidelines, developed to help raise academic standards and expectations for students, teachers and schools alike, measure 12th graders’ performance in 20 key categories designed to evaluate schools’ effectiveness and to assist educators in making necessary curriculum and staff adjustments.

Of the 20 categories, the 52 high schools in San Diego County met or exceeded statewide targets in an average of 13 indicators during the past academic year, with individual school scores ranging from a high of 17 at Torrey Pines and Carlsbad high schools to a low of nine at three schools.

‘Notable Achievement’

Although the local administrators said at a news conference Friday that they do not know how San Diego’s 13 average compares to other counties throughout the state, they expressed pleasure over what one official termed the “notable achievement” of most local high schools surpassing a majority of the statewide goals.

“These performance targets are an attempt to make the schools accountable . . . and these statistics show that our high schools are passing that test,” said Jack Tierney, manager of research and evaluation for the San Diego County Office of Education.

Among other things, the 20 performance standards evaluate schools on the basis of the number of seniors who took three or more years of mathematics and science, the number who enrolled in advanced courses in those and other subject areas, scores on California Assessment Program (CAP) tests and college entrance exams and dropout rates. Statewide statistics in those categories have been gathered for the past four years, and the targets are based on projected annual increases in performance levels.

For example, in the 1983-1984 school year, the statewide average for the number of high school students who took at least three years of science before graduation was 33%, while the target for the academic year that ended this month was 40%. To meet that target, therefore, a school had to improve by 7 percentage points over the past four years. (Schools also could meet the performance targets in another way, by scoring within the top 25% of “comparable” schools in each category, a comparison made on the basis of student body composition and various socioeconomic factors.)

The highest cumulative scores attained by the San Diego schools were in the categories dealing with students who took at least three years of math and science, with 50 of the 52 schools meeting the statewide targets in both categories. At 38 of the schools, students took three or more years of a foreign language, and students at 32 took four years of history.

Topped State Averages

The local high schools also surpassed the statewide averages in categories measuring students’ performance on the CAP tests. The San Diego countywide average for the CAP reading test was 65.2%, compared to the statewide figure of 63.6%, and the local average score on the math test was 72.4%, compared to 70% statewide.

In contrast, only nine San Diego high schools met the statewide targets on dropout rates, even though the figure for most local schools was only about 2%. While emphasizing that they hope to make improvements in that category next year, school officials also noted that a new definition and method of measuring dropouts that was adopted last year may have skewed the figures somewhat. Previously, schools simply reported their attrition rates, a method that did not distinguish between students who simply dropped out and those who moved away, died or left a particular school for other reasons.

“In the past, the schools had no real fix on what their dropout rate was,” Tierney said. “Now that we’re all working with the same definition, we’re in a better position to address the problem.”

Led by Torrey Pines and Carlsbad, nine San Diego schools met the statewide targets in at least 15 categories, including Fallbrook, O’Farrell, San Dieguito and Bonita Vista, which met 16 targets, and Borrego Springs, Lincoln and Sweetwater, which met 15 targets.

A major factor in the academic accomplishments at Torrey Pines, which recently was named one of the nation’s top public schools, is what Assistant Principal Marilyn Pugh termed “real heavy duty teamwork between parents, the community, staff and students.”

Pugh also credited Torrey Pines’ “block” schedule--in which students take two-hour courses every other day, rather than a single hour daily--with enhancing academic standards. The longer two-hour sessions not only produce more comprehensive lessons with fewer interruptions, but also require teachers to be “creative and extremely willing to involve the students,” Pugh said.

Raising Standards Helps

One of the conclusions that local school officials have drawn from the data released Friday, Tierney said, is that as curriculum standards are raised, students’ performances also improve. Despite initial concerns among teachers and others that higher standards might discourage students and result in lower performance levels, some local high schools found that as they increased the difficulty level of courses in various subject areas, students’ performances actually improved.

“What it shows is that if you raise the expectations and provide students with a more rigorous academic challenge, they respond,” Tierney said. “You might think that when you raise standards, dropouts will increase and performance will go down. But I think it works just the opposite.”

At Lincoln High School, for example, the replacement of general, low-level mathematics and science courses with more advanced classes “spurred the students on” to higher achievement levels, according to Lincoln Principal Ruby Cremaschi-Schwimmer. Adopting “A New Attitude” as its slogan, Lincoln, which has a 95% minority student body drawn primarily from low-income families, met state targets in 15 of the 20 categories, including growth in reading and math skills.

“We knew we were taking a risk by (raising course levels), but we also were careful to put a safety net in place,” Cremaschi-Schwimmer said, referring to special tutorial and reading programs that the school established to help students handle the tougher courses.

The absence of a sufficient number of such “external, back-up support systems” may be one reason that some other local schools scored lower overall, school officials said. The three local schools that scored lowest--Granite Hills, Grossmont and Monte Vista, each of which met only nine of the 20 targets--all are located within the Grossmont Union High District.

“Grossmont is just starting to do things a little differently and focus more on some of those support areas . . . needed to help ‘C’ students handle the college prep curriculum,” Tierney said. “It takes a while to start seeing results, but I think they’re moving in the right direction.”

HOW COUNTY HIGH SCHOOLS FARED

Number of 20 DISTRICT Performance Standards Met BORREGO SPRINGS UNIFIED Borrego Springs 15 CARLSBAD UNIFIED Carlsbad 17 CORONADO UNIFIED Coronado 13 ESCONIDDO UNION HIGH Escondido 14 Orange Glen 14 San Pasqual 13 FALLBROOK UNION HIGH Fallbrook 16 GROSSMONT UNION HIGH El Cajon Valley 11 El Capitan 13 Helix 11 Granite Hills 9 Grossmont 9 Monte Vista 9 Mt. Miguel 10 Santana 14 Valhalla 12 JULIAN UNION HIGH Julian 10 MOUNTAIN EMPIRE UNIFIED Mountain Empire 13 OCEANSIDE UNIFIED El Camino 13 Oceanside 14 POWAY UNIFIED Mt. Carmel 12 Poway 14 RAMONA UNIFIED Ramona 12 SAN DIEGO UNIFIED Clairemont 13 Crawford 12 Gompers 11 Hoover 12 Kearny 10 La Jolla 14 Lincoln 15 Madison 11 Mira Mesa 11 Mission Bay 13 Morse 13 O’Farrell 16 Patrick Henry 12 Point Loma 14 San Diego 13 Serra 14 University City 12 SAN DIEGUITO UNION HIGH San Dieguito 16 Torrey Pines 17 SAN MARCOS UNIFIED San Marcos 13 SWEETWATER UNION HIGH Bonita Vista 16 Castle Park 14 Chula Vista 13 Hilltop 14 Mar Vista 13 Montgomery 12 Southwest 12 Sweetwater 15 VISTA UNIFIED Vista 13