Testing the learning curve in California's schools - controversy over California Learning Assessment System that emphasizes essays to measure critical thinking rather than testing of subject matter

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 1, 1994 | by Gayle M.B. Hanson

While the courts backed up the state board, forcing Antelope Valley to administer the test, none of the other school districts that refused have acquiesced.

"We just picked up the test and sent it back," says Aycock. "So far our correspondence with the state Department of Education has been cordial. And we don't believe that they can legally withhold funding from us refusing to administer the test."

Meanwhile, the battle over the test's future is being waged in the state Legislature where a bill that would extend CLAS funding recently received Senate approval. Across the aisle in the Assembly, however, the bill has yet to make it out of the education committee. In recent hearings, numerous opposition forces raised a unified voice against the test.

One of the most compelling opponents was Mildred Lynch, a member of the Conejo Valley Unified School District Board. Addressing the education committee, the gray-haired former English teacher argued that CLAS is the worst piece of educational claptrap to befall education since the new math debacle of the 1960s.

"Nowhere [in the test] is it expected that students exercise critical thinking by making a judgment, drawing a conclusion, expressing a comparison by drawing from the text and supporting it with evidence from the test," Lynch argued.

"Instead, they are led down a winding path of emotional responses to something less than great literature, led away from the test by means of loosely contrived, meaningless questions, apparently designed to evoke just such emotional responses."

But if the voices of educators and therapists aren't enough to make lawmakers think twice before refinancing the controversial tests, the voices of parents -- often voters -- may be.

Michele Myers, a single mother with a 15-year-old son, flew up from Southern California to express her displeasure before the Legislature. "I took time off from my job to come up here, because there is no way that I am going to allow my son to take this test," she said. "I believe in the educational system and in the value of testing academic knowledge. But not this test -- not now, not ever. As far as I am concerned, this test is in direct violation of my parental rights. And we parents are not going to go away, no matter how hard you try to ram this back down our throats."