Invasion of Privacy Cited in School Test

Teachers and union representatives accused the Torrance Unified School District Friday of invading students’ privacy by using a writing test to identify students for drug counseling.

They were sharply critical of district administrators for using the writing proficiency exams given to fifth-, eighth- and ninth-graders to determine the depth of student knowledge about drugs. Several teachers called the action a betrayal of trust.

Reviewed by Psychologists

“What they did was unethical, particularly when it was done on a mass scale,” said Bill Franchini, director of the Torrance Teachers Assn.

Neither teachers nor students knew that the state-mandated tests would be reviewed by school psychologists, counselors and administrators for other than writing proficiency.

“I think it is an invasion of privacy,” Franchini said.

“Our concern was that they were taking tests that had been done in one context and using them for another.”

Fifth-graders were asked to write an essay giving advice to a friend who had been offered pills. Eighth-graders were asked to write a letter to a friend who was having trouble breaking a marijuana habit. And high school students were asked to describe their feelings about a friend’s involvement with alcohol or drugs.

Franchini said some of the tests were sent back to the school principals with a yellow mark indicating that a counselor or psychologist should contact the student because of an apparently excessive knowledge about drugs.

District officials defended their actions and said they were only trying to determine what changes are necessary in the district’s drug education program.

Assistant Supt. Gail Wickstrom said the criticism was “a real shock” to her and she denied that the district invaded the privacy of students.

‘Not Private’

“I believe any time a youngster writes a test that is going to be read by teachers, they are not private, not anonymous. . . . I think it is the responsibility of the staff of an educational institution to identify youngsters who are in trouble and find help for them.”

But some educators were critical of the district’s actions.

State schools chief Bill Honig expressed concern about using a generalized test to take specific action in individual cases. Honig said students should have been told that the tests would be used for other purposes.

“I think there is a trust,” Honig said. “If you want kids to write, to be creative, and do things honestly, you’ve got to tell them what’s going on. . . . If you want them to write something and not be censoring their own thoughts, you should tell them the ground rules.”

Wickstrom said 2,000 students were given the writing proficiency tests in February. After the exams were graded by teachers, a second group of school officials reviewed the essays and no more than 50 were flagged for follow-up.

“It was just a case of saying, ‘Take a look at this child,’ ” she said. “When there is a troubled youngster, it is the responsibility of the staff member to get additional help. I believe that is what the public expects.”

Wickstrom said that fifth-graders did not have a lot of information about drugs. Much of the information in their essays reflected television advertising for drug treatment programs.

She likened the test to a research and development effort.

“We were really looking to see what the kids knew so we can improve our curriculum,” she said. “We do not intend to do this as a routine practice.”

Several Torrance teachers were outraged at use of the essays for purposes other than writing proficiency.

Betrayal Cited

Sally Mitchell, an English teacher at Calle Mayor Middle School who was one of the leaders in grading the eighth-grade exams, said both teachers and students were betrayed.

“I feel like somebody’s diary has been read,” Mitchell said. “I don’t know about legality, but I surely think it was unethical.”

When the tests were given in February, Mitchell said, many of her students asked who would be reading them. They were told they would be read by teachers, who were interested in writing ability.

She said students were told to relate their personal experience and if they did not have personal experience they were told to make it up. “You are not being scored on fact or fiction,” Mitchell said she told them. Some of the papers flagged and sent to school principals may have been fictional, she said.

Mitchell said she discussed the controversy surrounding use of the tests with her students and about half said they had made things up.

“They felt betrayed. Their privacy was totally invaded,” she said. “I feel somewhat betrayed myself. How dare they destroy my students’ trust in me?”

‘Big Brother’

Deborah Fox, an English teacher at Madrona Middle School, expressed similar sentiments. “It is an invasion of privacy, it is an invasion of trust,” Fox said. “We weren’t told, the students weren’t told, and the parents weren’t told.”

Fox said the students were told only that they were taking a writing test.

“In a way it is lying to our students, lying to us,” she said.

Fox said she hopes that students’ reputations are not besmirched. “It’s too Big Brother for me. People’s basic rights are being invaded.”

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, officials said that they do not, and would not, use the state-required proficiency exams to find out about drug and alcohol abuse.

Johanna Goldberg, coordinator of the Los Angeles district’s Drug Free Schools program, said she would object to the way the Torrance district used the test on the grounds that it would be deceitful and would breach trust between students and officials.

“Students have rights and we are sensitive to them,” Goldberg said.

She added that linking knowledge of drug abuse with actual drug use may misidentify a child who is not a drug user but who has learned about drugs from movies, television or friends.

“They see people doing coke in a movie and they may have knowledge that powdered cocaine is chopped up on a mirror before it is snorted and that crack is smoked in a pipe,” she said, adding, “I have knowledge of that through the movies (but) I haven’t done it.”

Times Staff Writer George Stein contributed to this story.