San Dieguito Teachers Balk at Plan to Set Up Standardized Testing

A program to improve teaching methods in the already high-achieving San Dieguito schools has hit a snag: Teachers are reluctant to get involved for fear that it may lead to job evaluations based on how their students score on tests.

The apprehension among San Dieguito teachers may be the harbinger of a statewide problem because districts throughout California are encouraged to participate in the program under the Education Reform Act of 1983.

The San Dieguito district, which has six junior and senior high schools in Encinitas, Solana Beach and Del Mar, was one of the first districts to become involved because it had started a similar program of its own.

As such, the San Dieguito district is further along than most districts toward establishing ways to assess the effectiveness of teachers.

Refusal by Teachers

School board members Thursday night were warned that teachers are refusing to take part in devising standardized tests for their students because they believe the test results may be used to unfairly evaluate teachers.

Joe Skinner, chairman of the mathematics department at Torrey Pines High in Del Mar, said the program, called curriculum alignment, cannot be successful unless more teachers are involved. Skinner was backed by Carol Carrillo, a mathematics teacher at Earl Warren Junior High in Solana Beach.

Skinner urged the board to clarify how the issue of teacher evaluation will be handled before it further undermines teacher morale.

“I know (teachers) who will cry over it, and their effectiveness will decline,” he said.

Assurance Offered

School board members stressed that teachers have nothing to fear.

“We’ve got to maintain the ability to sit down and dialogue this through,” said board member Mary Ann McCarthy.

Steve Armstrong, a physical education and computer teacher at San Dieguito High in Encinitas, said the mathematics teachers are not the only ones who are worried. Armstrong is president of the San Dieguito Faculty Assn., which represents the district’s 340 teachers.

“The reason we see the apprehension in the math department is that it is one of the first departments to begin field-testing the idea (of standardized tests),” Armstrong said in an interview Friday.

Concern in PE Department

“What we’re seeing with the math teachers, we’ll probably see in all departments as soon as they’re hit with the field-testing and effectiveness assessment portion of the project,” he said. “I know in the PE department, there is already concern about where the evaluation of teachers fits in this process.”

The curriculum alignment program was a key part of State Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig’s push to improve schools through higher standards, better use of state funding and tougher testing.

The 1983 bill called for higher graduation standards, longer school days, more state funding for high-achieving school districts (such as San Dieguito), and a new optional exam for college bound students called the Golden State Exam. School officials were also given more leeway in firing non-tenured teachers.

Curriculum alignment involved teachers working with the state Department of Education to set up “frameworks” for all major subjects--detailed lists of what skills should be taught in what grades.

Aim at Similar Goals

Teachers in individual districts then were asked to devise standardized curriculum, so that, for example, all beginning algebra classes use a similar approach and aim at similar goals.

The final step--the one San Dieguito is now on--involves devising tests to be used by all teachers teaching the same subject.

Teachers are now afraid those tests will be used to decide who is a good teacher and who is not--without any consideration of other factors, like the differences between groups of students.

By law, the school board could mandate that teachers use specific tests in their classrooms. But that approach is generally avoided, and thus voluntary participation is key to a program such as curriculum alignment.

Unless teachers “buy in,” both sides agree, the program will be severely undercut.

Although his figures were disputed by district officials, Skinner, who is the curriculum alignment leader for mathematics, said that only one-third of the nearly 60 mathematics teachers in the district are involved in devising the new tests.

“The concept is a very good one,” Skinner said in an interview. “It is one many teachers have wanted for a long time: consistency. As a calculus teacher, I would like to know that the student in the first-row who took trigonometry received the same instruction as the one in the fifth-row who also took trig.”

The problem, according to Skinner and Armstrong, is that teachers feel the test results may be used to undermine the traditional method of setting teacher salaries, which relies on experience and the number of college courses a teacher completes.

“There is just no tool that is necessarily effective in assessing teachers because the variables in the classroom are enormous,” Armstrong said. “It is not a quantity process. Education is not like a job on the assembly line or building houses or selling stocks and bonds.

“Part of the problem is that in trying to assess teacher effectiveness, you immediately begin to equate it with a business,” he said. “It’s not a business, it’s education. Test scores do not always reflect teacher effectiveness.”

There is no current proposal to tie test scores with teacher salaries. Indeed, the history of such proposals in California school districts is marked with political explosiveness and labor unrest.

That said, the San Dieguito school board and district administration are committed to using the curriculum alignment program to assess teacher effectiveness in order to help teachers improve their classroom techniques.

“There is no way we’re going to flush out an assessment program for teachers that has not been designed by teachers and field-tested by them,” said Asst. Supt. Robert Morton. “We would really have a small revolution our hands.”

Still, teacher effectiveness is the most important part of the program, Morton said.

“Everything else is just icing,” he said. “An assessment component is essential. Say we have an eighth-grade math teacher, and we notice that students are weak in fractions and graphs. We can say: How can we fix this? How can we help you?”

San Dieguito schools regularly rank among the top schools in San Diego County on the state reading and mathematics tests.

San Dieguito students score far above national norms on the Scholastic Aptitude Test for college-bound students, and a recent list of students receiving honors from the first Golden State Exam in algebra and geometry contained several dozen names from San Dieguito.

Using money from the district’s share of the state lottery fund, the San Dieguito district has offered stipends of $750 and $1,500 to teachers to work during the summer on curriculum and testing.

Morton said that 31 math teachers have been involved--although Skinner said that many have only been involved long enough to collect their stipends. Those involved have tended to be the younger teachers, causing yet another problem, according to Morton and Armstrong.

“We’ve developed a kind of generation gap between teachers,” Armstrong said. “Those who have been most involved have been the eager, go-getter, younger teachers, who possibly need the money more. The older teachers have not been as involved. The problem is that if you have tests devised by only 3 teachers, it will be hard to get all 30 to use them.”

After Thursday’s plea to the school board, Morton said he will be making the rounds of district schools, trying to allay fears and stress the importance of the program.

“It’s going to be a process of going back and talking to the academic chairmen and going to the campuses to talk to the math teachers and anyone else who is concerned,” he said.