Test Scores

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the third in a five-part series on how the local school district is dealing with the No Child Left Behind Act. To many at Wilson Elementary School, last summer felt like a cosmic joke. The school made another leap on its standardized test scores, posting better results for the sixth straight year. Low-income students, taken as a subgroup, topped themselves again. Some of the wealthier schools across town posted lower gains. But in August, the federal government put Wilson on the sanctions list because its test scores were below par. The reason?

How pleasant to see a positive, happy headline grace the top of the front page of the Pilot on Aug. 16. "Local schools post gains in test scores," the headline declared and was followed by: "District sees strong increases in math and English...." Let's give the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, principals, teachers and students some well-deserved credit. Critics may claim that the schools taught to the tests. But that is not a bad thing if you believe that success in today's ever more complex and rapidly changing society requires that people be competent in English and basic mathematics and that California educators designed their tests to assess these required skills.

Wendy Leece This week we asked our parent panelists the following: Test results in Newport-Mesa district schools continue to be higher in affluent, primarily white neighborhoods than in lower-income, minority neighborhoods. Can that gap ever be closed? What would it take? Is the district committed to doing it? It is unlikely that the gap will close in the near future; however, each year consistent gains in test scores are being made where teachers in low-income, minority neighborhoods work hard to educate their students and prepare them to take the tests.

When the report on federal targets was released for California schools Thursday, TeWinkle Middle School Principal Kirk Bauermeister wasn’t ready to call the fact that his school met all federal targets and vastly improved scores across all categories vindication, but he did acknowledge it made a statement. “You are always going to have naysayers no matter what,” Bauermeister said. “The teachers and the kids here know this is a great school. I think the numbers speak volumes.

TeWinkle Middle School is really looking forward to the new school year. The school has been undergoing changes, physically and academically, over the past couple of years, and students seem to be getting the message. Tuesday was the first day of school for Newport-Mesa Unified School District as children returned to their respective campuses after summer vacation. For eighth-graders at TeWinkle Middle School, it was the beginning of the end of a long road. Students at TeWinkle know the school has had issues in the past concerning test scores and have seen one principal leave and a new one step in. For them, despite the controversy that has sometimes accompanied the school, the action has been well worth it. “I am looking forward to just getting the spirit back to TeWinkle,” 13-year-old Chad Fackler said.

Recent data from a national magazine that crunched numbers and compiled percentages from Advanced Placement test scores would seem to upend the age-old notion that students who attend high schools in wealthier neighborhoods automatically achieve better test scores. In Newsweek's June compilation of America's Top High Schools, which tallied up the Advanced Placement scores at 27,000 high schools across the country, Costa Mesa High School ranked 1,500th and Estancia High School came in at 1,148th.

It was time for my daughter to move on to fourth grade and I was pretty frightened. A number of people at Sonora Elementary School were telling me that Davis Elementary School was scary. They said there was bullying there and it had a negative atmosphere. I just wanted my girl to be safe. I would ask one teacher and she would say that it was a little rough, then I'd talk to a parent and she would say that she pulled her son out to home school him because of bullying, then I talked to another who said her daughter goes there and she has no problem.

The results are in. Newport-Mesa students and teachers deserve a hearty round of applause for the overall improvement in Stanford 9 test scores. Standardized exams are meant to measure both how well the students are learning and how effectively the educators are teaching. And if the Stanford 9 results are an indication, it looks as if things are looking up for the Newport-Mesa Unified School District. In general, the scores have risen during the last three years--definitely cause for celebration.

Jocelyn Diaz learned about all kinds of numbers this year — including lucky ones. The Costa Mesa Middle School seventh-grader joined her classmates Friday in math teacher Marcus Franco's annual "cash grab," in which students reach blindly into a cardboard box and draw out dollar bills. The students raise the money from family and friends throughout the year, and the week before school ends, they get to reach in and pick a number of bills — with the number of draws depending on their test scores, homework and other factors.