
DATE: Wednesday, July 16, 1997              TAG: 9707160470

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A10  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY NANCY YOUNG, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:  118 lines

SOME POOR SCHOOLS STRUGGLE DESPITE ABOVE-AVERAGE SCORES IN CHESAPEAKE

Good news. The school district has scored above the national average on the new Stanford 9 standardized test.

Bad news. The good district average masks marked disparities between schools. Students in the district's poor communities were more likely to score significantly below the national average in the areas of reading, math and language.

Almost 40 percentage points separate the highest and the lowest elementary schools at the third- and fifth-grade levels. For example, at the third-grade level, students at Thurgood Marshall Elementary scored at the 36th percentile. That means 64 percent of third-graders nationwide scored better than students at the school. At Southeastern Elementary, students scored at the 74th percentile, meaning only 26 percent of the nation's third-graders did better.

The disparity wasn't much different at middle and high schools, where more than 25 percentage points separate the highest and lowest scoring schools.

Why?

``There are a lot of variables, like transience of the population and socioeconomic status,'' said Linda Duffy Palombo, assistant superintendent for instruction.

In fact, at Thurgood Marshall - the lowest-scoring school at the third-grade level - 84 percent of the students qualified for free and reduced lunches last year, the highest percentage in the district. Qualifying for the free and reduced lunch program is seen as a barometer of poverty levels for a school.

School Board member James J. Wheaton wasn't surprised by the disparity in scores.

``This is true every year,'' he said. ``I think the numbers for the district as a whole is the more important thing. When you focus on individual schools, you may not realize that the quality of teaching (in lower scoring schools) may be just as good as in other schools, but other factors, like income, come into play.''

Palombo said the district does not consider factors such as race and gender when analyzing test scores, because those statistics typically don't change from one year to the next. Instead the district looks for disruptive factors that might affect a school's test scores, such as a high number of student or teacher transfers.

As school officials had predicted, 4 percent fewer of the city's sixth graders passed the Literacy Passport Test this year than last. Camelot Elementary and G.A. Treakle Elementary saw the biggest declines. Only two schools - Great Bridge Middle and Hickory Middle - improved.

The drop was predictable, Palombo said, because the LPT tested knowledge of the 1988 Standards of Learning, but the district had already aligned its curriculum to the 1995 Standards of Learning. What that means is that in many cases teachers are teaching different material than they did previously and it's not matching up with the old test.

However, Palombo said that discrepancy alone could not account for Camelot's 22 percent drop and Treakle's 14 percent drop. She said she didn't know what had caused those drops.

The drop at Camelot was disturbing not just because of its size, but because the year before the school had seen a dramatic increase in LPT results. Palombo said school officials had hoped the improvement was due to a program designed to boost test scores, but the same program was used this year.

How the district fared in comparison to the state and other Hampton Roads cities will not be known until next week when the state, Portsmouth, Suffolk and Norfolk are expected to release their figures. Virginia Beach released its figures Tuesday.

Although low scores have no concrete consequence now, when the state adopts new Standards of Accreditation, schools could be penalized for low test scores regardless of the students' socioeconomic status.

``It's the state's view that regardless of whatever circumstances a school is in, all students will be held to the same expectation,'' said Palombo. ILLUSTRATION: Graphics

RESULTS:

GRADE 3 Top five scoring schools, by percentile

1. Southeastern Elementary, 74th

2. (tie) Butts Road Intermediate, 71st

2. Hickory Elementary, 71st

4. Great Bridge Intermediate, 70th

5. Western Branch Intermediate, 68th

Bottom five scoring schools, by percentile

1. Thurgood Marshall Elementary, 36th

2. Southwestern Elementary, 38th

3. (tie) Rena B. Wright Elementary, 40th

3. Camelot Elementary, 40th