Kern schools improve performance scores

API is the state Department of Education's first-ever school-byschool ranking. The scores are based on the standardized basic skills test, the Stanford Achievement Test.

The API is a numeric index that scores schools in a range from 200 to 1,000, with 200 being the lowest. Schools are ranked against similar schools across the state on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 considered poor, 5 or 6 considered average and 10 considered excellent.

Muroc Joint Unified, Southern Kern Unified and Mojave Unified school districts all demonstrated some measure of improvement for the 2000 test year.

Mojave Elementary School, in the Mojave district, scored 554 on the API, up from 459 last year, which gave it a growth of 95 points.

Principal Cynthia White attributed her school's increase to a combination of factors including parent participation and after-school workshops for students in need of tutoring.

"It's a uniform process, implementing standards and including the parents," White said. "(The school stresses) helping (parents) know what they can do to help their children be more successful at school."

The 1999 API was the baseline for measuring growth. The state Department of Education and a governor's task force assigned each school in the state a target for improvement over last year's scores.

Each school's target was 5% of the difference between its 1999 API and 800. Those already over 800 had to increase at least one point.

West Boron Elementary School in the Muroc district scored 719 up from 648 last year. The school was assigned a growth target of 8 but gained 71 points.

"I think that teachers really concentrated on material delivery," Principal Patricia Thomas said. "They were aware of areas students had not done well in before."

Thomas said the school participated in reading challenges and teachers also took the time to make students understand terms that would be used in the test.

"There are certain terms used in testing, not ordinarily used in classroom," she said.

Boron Junior Senior High School in the Muroc scored 630, up from 597 in 1999.

Principal Toni Killberg said her school implemented a breakfast program for all of their students for each of the four days of testing and served students eggs, bacon, biscuits and juice.

"We feel nutrition is important," Killberg said.

Group meetings were conducted with students so teachers could explain the importance of the tests. Students were given a graph with past test scores and learned where they needed to improve.

"Those are the two things we did to help them improve scores," Killberg said. "I think one of the big things was letting them know it was important. Of course our teachers did a good job teaching the material."

All schools that met their growth targets will share in $577 million in rewards from the state. The schools will get more than $150 per student to be used as the school site committee determines; all staff at the school will also get an estimated $800 bonus per employee.

The state will dedicate $100 million for the biggest individual bonuses, $5,000 to $25,000 for about 12,250 teachers and principals in schools in the bottom half of the state whose APIs went up the most.

In all three of the Southeastern Kern school districts, schools either met or surpassed their growth targets. However, the state also required growth among certain subgroups within the schools.

Tropico Middle School in Southern Kern had a growth target of three and passed with seven, giving it a score of 666.

In Tropico's subgroups, 209 students who are Hispanic or Latino scored 624, a growth of 36, passing their target of six. However, 291 students who are in the subgroup known as white, not Hispanic, scored 688, down 43 from last year's score of 731.

Tropico's principal and the district's superintendent did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Other southern Kern schools did score higher for both overall and subgroups.

California City Middle School in the Mojave district scored 652, up 42 points from last year's score of 610.

Principal Larry Adams said his staff deserves the credit for the school's improvement. Adams formed a leadership team and set goals based on the previous year's scores.

"We put what additional resources we have in (the) language arts and math areas," Adams said. "I think our kids did a great job."

Mojave High School was not listed because of problems with the school's 2000 STAR demographic information. The 1999-2000 API growth report, reflecting corrections to the demographic information, will be available in December, according to the state.

Uploaded October 5, 2000