Leveling the field

Alex Coolman and Danette Goulet

NEWPORT-MESA -- Raul Diaz doesn’t know to explain Costa Mesa’s low

education rankings; he’s just trying to make sure his family doesn’t get

caught in the trap.

Diaz’s niece, Tammy Cerrato, is in the first grade at Wilson Elementary

School, the school that ranked the lowest in the Newport-Mesa school

district on the statewide Academic Performance Index, better known as

API, released Tuesday.

Come next year, Diaz says, he plans to transfer Tammy to California

Elementary, the Costa Mesa school that received the highest ranking.

“This school’s always been like this,” Diaz said, waiting in his minivan

for Tammy to get out of class at Wilson. “I don’t know why.”

Still, other parents said they have seen definite improvements at Wilson

over the last few years.

“Right now, they have a lot of books and good teachers,” said Teresa

Quezada, whose son Christopher is in the second grade at Wilson. “It’s

improving quite a bit.”

Then there’s Newport Beach’s Andersen Elementary, which received the

highest score of any school in Orange County -- 933 points out of a

possible 1,000.

Lockie Russell, president of the Andersen PTA, attributed the school’s

success to a combination of parent involvement, reading curriculum and

parents’ ability to help financially.

“I think that parents in this neighborhood put education as No. 1,” she

said. “Reading is huge at Andersen -- at the kindergarten level, they

require 30 minutes of reading every night.”

There are two other factors, Russell noted, that makes a comparison

unfair.

“If children are having trouble with a subject, parents immediately jump

in and figure out everything and anything they can do to help.

Unfortunately, that sometimes costs money,” she said. “Definitely, the

language barrier, I think, must be huge for those other schools. Those

tests are all in English. Comparing Andersen to that other school is not

at all fair.”

Across the district, parents and educators were working Thursday to come

up with an explanation for the pattern revealed by the API results: while

Newport Beach schools were among the best performers in the state, Costa

Mesa schools like Wilson, Whittier and Rea elementary were mired near the

bottom of the pool.

“I think we’re on the right track. I think Costa Mesa has everything it

needs to be the best,” said school board president Dana Black. “I think

it has to do with expectations. We’re so used to comparing ourselves and

we’ll never get there.”

As a parent on the Newport Harbor High School PTA, Black said they used

to bemoan the fact that Corona del Mar parents could write a check for a

new football weight room, while at Newport Harbor, they could raise funds

for 10 years.

“So we stopped talking about money and set goals. We had to roll up our

sleeves,” she said. “I believe all of that is available in Costa Mesa.

When I visited Victoria, there were parents in almost every classroom.”

The most common explanation to the difference in scores seems to lie in

the differences in community makeup -- and the fact that the rankings are

based solely on the Stanford 9 test.

“It’s that all the kids are taking the same test, regardless of English,”

said school board member Martha Fluor. “All kids must take the test if

they can read the example or not. Yeah, we have our work cut out for us

and we recognize that.”

Linda Mook, president of the Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers, agreed

that gauging how students, teachers and schools are performing -- based

on how students perform on one test on one day of the year -- is not

truly reflective.

“The truth is, you start where students are and take them as far as they

can go academically. We don’t have a level playing field,” Mook said.

“There are going to be differences and it’s going to be reflected.

“If you don’t have a foundation in the English language and you’re being

instructed in that language, then you’re a step behind to begin with,”

she added. “And therein really lies the primary problem.”

Teachers, principals and district officials say they have been aware of

these problems for years and have been trying to improve the situation.

Whittier stepped forward last year, identifying itself as an

under-performing school, and has received state funding to implement new

programs.

“We’re monitoring very closely Whittier, and we will find out if those

interventions worked -- the parenting classes, the preschool program, the

reading program and increased parent involvement,” Fluor said. “If they

do, we’re ready to put some of those into place at other schools.”