Tests Find Students’ Skills Appalling, Cavazos Says

Extensive testing of American elementary and high school students shows they are still “dreadfully inadequate” in reading and writing skills, Secretary of Education Lauro F. Cavazos said Tuesday as he released a national report card ordered by Congress.

“As a nation,” Cavazos said, “we should be appalled, appalled that we have placed our children in such jeopardy.”

Although black and Latino pupils have shown marked improvement in reading skills during the 18 years since the national testing began, their gains did not change the results significantly for children in general.

In its starkest statistics, the study showed that one out of seven 17-year-olds had failed to reach an intermediate reading level, 9-year-olds in 1988 could not read as well as their counterparts in 1980, a third of high school juniors could not write an adequate job application, and two-thirds could not write a persuasive letter.

In general, the testing showed that children in 1988 scored as poorly or worse in both reading and writing as their predecessors had in 1984.

The results were interpreted by some involved in the study as criticism of the Reagan Administration for squeezing funds allocated to Head Start and other educational programs aimed at helping poor children.

According to periodic assessments of reading levels beginning in 1971, children born in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when programs like Head Start were more widespread, scored consistently better as they matured. Children born later did not do as well.

Wilhelmina F. Delco, vice chairwoman of the National Assessment Governing Board, a new agency charged by Congress with interpreting the results of the national tests, insisted that the improvements in the scores of minority students could clearly be attributed to programs like Head Start.

“The Head Start program has been substantially diminished in some areas and abolished in others,” noted Delco, a Democratic state legislator from Texas. She cautioned that the board had not yet met to interpret the test scores.

The reports are sure to fuel widespread demands for a basic overhaul of the American educational system, demands that were echoed by Cavazos at the news conference.

“If anyone still doubts that it is time for change at an elemental, fundamental level,” he said, “these data should be persuasive.” But Cavazos, who left without taking any questions, made no mention of more federal funds to deal with the problem.

A call for more government spending was issued by Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the country’s two main teacher unions.

“The performance record of American students in reading and writing is abysmal, and it should send shock waves through community after community,” Shanker said in a statement.

Improvements in reading and writing will take “imagination and hard work and, yes, that costs money,” Shanker said.

“If President Bush really believes that cutting the capital gains tax for the wealthy will do more to strengthen the economy over the long haul than investing in our children’s education, then he needs a refresher course in economic reality.”

The 1988 testing involved 100,000 pupils and was carried out by the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, N.J. In its “Report Card on Reading,” the service compared the results with previous national assessments of reading made in 1971, 1976, 1980 and 1984.

The results showed that 9-year-olds improved their scores markedly in the 1970s, but they declined somewhat in the 1980s. Meanwhile, 13-year-olds stayed at about the same level through the 1970s and 1980s, and 17-year-olds did not gain or lose ground in the 1970s but improved significantly in the 1980s.

The most remarkable progress was shown by black students, who moved ahead of Latino pupils in reading achievement and reduced their disadvantage in relation to white pupils by more than half. In 1971, for example, black high school students scored 52 points behind white high school students; the gap was cut to 32 points in 1984 and 21 points in 1988.

Latino pupils also had impressive gains. In 1975, Latino high school students scored 41 points behind white high school students; that was cut to 28 points in 1984 and 24 points in 1988.

But the achievements were presented with a note of caution. “We’re not satisfied with the statement that minorities are doing better,” said Delco. “Compared with what?”

The increases were portrayed as less significant than the fact that the average reading level of all pupils, whether white, black or Latino, was below 300. That is the level classified by the Educational Testing Service as “adept reading,” meaning “an ability to read and comprehend a wide variety of text materials” and “summarize and elaborate on the information and ideas presented.”

Youths who have not developed adept reading skills, the report said, “would appear to be at risk as they become adults in a society that depends so heavily on the ability to extract meaning from varied forms of written language.”

Yet, only 46% of white 17-year-olds, 26% of black 17-year-olds, and 24% of Latino 17-year-olds scored high enough to be classified as adept readers.

In general, the Educational Testing Service found that pupils tended to know their spelling, grammar and punctuation.

“Most students . . . have mastered the basics--the minimum competencies of writing: they can spell, punctuate and create a simple sentence,” said Archie E. Lappointe, executive director of the Educational Testing Service’s National Assessment of Educational Progress. “But the quality of their ideas and their expression is very poor.”

Meanwhile, the Quality Education for Minorities Project, an organization chaired by former Secretary of Labor F. Ray Marshall, offered Tuesday an array of 58 proposals designed to improve the education of minorities in the United States.

The group’s recommendations included an end to tracking programs, restructuring of schools to give principals and teachers more authority and parents more ability to participate, and expansion of federal programs like Head Start and supplementary food for mothers and children.