Kids do yoga before testing

If Wilson Elementary School students ace their standardized tests this year, it may be thanks to the inner light.

The Westside campus spent more than a month preparing students for the California Standards Tests, which a number of schools in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District began taking on Monday. At Wilson, which is set to begin testing today, teachers reviewed material with students and gave out sample questions — but because study only goes so far, they also led yoga exercises to ease the tension.

“I think it helps kids to oxygenate their brains,” said Principal Candy Sperling. “If you do it right and you’re breathing and focusing inward, it really does help.”

From silent stretching to noisy pep rallies, Newport-Mesa schools took all kinds of routes to prepare for the tests, which are the benchmarks by which the federal government judges schools’ performance. The district’s elementary schools plans to take the exams this week and the next, with some students already breaking out their pencils Monday.

The California Standards Tests measure students in math, English, history and science, but it is the first two subjects that the government uses to rate a school. The government mandates 24.4% of students score as proficient in English and 26.5% in math; starting this fall, the standards will increase to 35.2% for English and 37% for math.

Newport-Mesa has seven schools on the Program Improvement list, which identifies campuses with high low-income populations that have struggled to meet federal standards. To graduate from the list, schools must score highly enough two straight years. According to Bonnie Swann, Newport-Mesa’s director of elementary education, that may be an easier feat to accomplish this year than next.

“There’s never another year when we have the same proficiency goal [as the year before],” she said. “People are feeling like this is the year to get out of Program Improvement, because then you have some breathing room.”

Sanctions or not, Newport-Mesa schools ensured students were ready to tackle the exams. Andersen Elementary School held a pep rally on Monday morning and even encouraged the youngest kids, who weren’t taking the tests, to show up and cheer. Kaiser Elementary School teacher Bonnie Brigman referred to the weeks before the test as “spring training” and lifted the classroom ban on baseball caps.

“I was the coach, and the kids were the ball team,” Brigman said. “When the principal visited the room once, we decided to make him the general manager.”