SCORES REFLECT ETHNIC DIVIDE; SCHOOLS AIM TO CLOSE GAP.

Byline: David R. Baker Staff Writer

Even at Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills - one of the best schools in the state - the maddening disparity in test scores among different racial and ethnic groups persists.

The poor performance of African-American and Latino students at El Camino when compared with whites and Asian-Americans on the Academic Performance Index released last week highlights an important new state education rule.

If any racial or ethnic group in a school fails to meet improvement targets set by the state on the next round of index scores, the whole school fails. The index, which ranks every California public school based on student achievement, was designed in part to shine a steady light on the problem.

``There's a huge gap,'' El Camino Principal Ronald Bauer said of the disparity in academic performance among students of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. ``We think we have an attitude of success where kids are expected to succeed. On the other hand, we have about a thousand kids who are not performing as well as they have to.''

With the release of the new school ratings, Bauer and many other principals now have the chance to bring in extra resources and seek new solutions to the problem of low-achieving groups.

``For too long, excuses have been made for students with low academic performance,'' said Ann S. Bancroft, spokeswoman for California's secretary of education.

But highlighting the problem and agreeing on its cause - and solutions - are very different issues.

Some educators have argued for years that the standardized tests at the heart of the index are biased against racial or ethnic minorities. Others point to the lack of textbooks and experienced teachers in minority neighborhoods.

Still others argue that white teachers may harbor stereotypes that lead them to demand less from African-American or Latino youngsters.

VALLEY STATISTICS

``I'd say expectation is a big part of it,'' said Melinda Lewis, chairwoman of Advocates for Valley African-American Students. Her group spent the last year compiling statistics on the performance of African-American students in San Fernando Valley schools and has found their scores lag behind those of other children on most campuses.

``Even from personal experience, I've had teachers assume my child was bused in from L.A.,'' said Lewis, who lives in North Hills. ``We're naive to assume that what we are as a society isn't reflected in the classrooms.''

Although individual schools received racial and ethnic results on the index last week, the Los Angeles Unified School District has not yet compiled districtwide data. School board members have requested the information and will likely get it in the next two months, Assistant Superintendent Judy Burton said.

But other test scores from the district reveal substantial gaps among student groups. The Stanford 9 exams on which last week's index results were based showed white students in most grades scoring near the 60th percentile nationwide on reading while African-Americans ranked about 30 percentile points lower. Latino students performed even worse.

While many Latino students start out as youngsters struggling with the English language, others do not. And while language becomes less of a problem for non-native speakers in the high school grades, their scores on reading and math continue to slip.

School Board President Genethia Hayes attributed much of the difference to the lack of resources at many schools in poor and working-class minority neighborhoods.

NEWER TEACHERS

Such schools often rely on teachers just entering the profession. Their inexperience might not pose such a problem in affluent neighborhoods where parents have more free time to spend helping children learn, Hayes said. But it can be disastrous in less-prosperous areas.

``It's not that we're saying these young (teachers) aren't bright and extremely well-motivated, but if they don't have the training and we put them in with children who need them the most, what do we expect the results to be?''

Hayes said the district may need to find ways to place its best teachers in such schools as a way to erase the gap. She doesn't expect it to be an easy change to make.

``You need to bite the bullet and figure out the bottom-line resources those children need,'' she said. ``And that's going to be an extremely contentious discussion, because some of these schools will have to get more.''

USING FEDERAL FUNDS

She also said she wants the district to examine how federal funds given to schools in poor neighborhoods are spent.

But disparities in academic performance among students of different races and ethnicities also exist on campuses in middle-class neighborhoods.

El Camino scored 716 out of a possible 1,000 on the Academic Performance Index. White students scored 780, African-Americans 560. Latino students at the school scored 575.

At Granada Hills High School, another academic powerhouse, the gap was less pronounced but still noticeable. White teens scored 770, while African-Americans hit 602 and Latinos 606.

Granada Hills Principal Mary Kathleen Rattay blamed part of the difference on the isolation that some African-American or Latino students feel when most of their classmates are white.

``If they're isolated in the classroom, it's harder,'' she said. ``It's easier for them to hang back.''

NOT PREPARED?

Bauer said many of his African-American students come from the central city and attended middle schools that didn't adequately prepare them for high school.

``Sometimes we'll get kids who have trouble with math who've been having trouble for seven years,'' the ECR principal said. ``Our approach is to push as hard as we can to encourage them to go into the hardest classes possible.''

Interim Superintendent Ramon Cortines said the state's new rankings will force schools and parents to finally deal with the issue.

``That's not going to go away,'' he said. ``Teachers and principals and parents - we're not going to be able to say there's nothing we can do.''

Cortines has proposed splitting LAUSD into 11 semiindependent districts, a change supporters say may help schools focus on the unique educational problems of different groups of students. If the school board approves the change, Cortines said he will insist that the administration of each mini-district take the new state data and devise strategies to help each group improve.

Hayes said closing the performance gap among racial and ethnic groups should be the district's top priority. And she wants parents to force the issue by talking about it among themselves and in the schools.

``You've got to say it,'' Hayes said, ``and you've got to encourage the community to keep coming down here and hitting us in the face with it.''

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Chart: Spring 1999 Stanford 9 scores