Loss of CAP Testing Seen as a Setback, but Not Fatal

It would be hard to find a more popular state endeavor than the student testing program that Gov. George Deukmejian stripped of funds in his budget vetoes Tuesday.

Called the California Assessment Program (CAP), it is the linchpin of the state’s education reforms and is widely praised by educators, business leaders and parents.

The California Assessment Program “is probably the best student assessment program in the country,” Allan Odden, professor of education at USC, said Wednesday. “It is at the cutting edge in the national testing field.”

The elimination of the $11-million testing program from next year’s $50-million Department of Education budget means that no CAP tests will be given in the coming school year, state officials said.

John Thomas, an administrator at the Ocean View School District in Huntington Beach, called the governor’s veto “a major blow to our district.”

“We had eliminated our in-house (student testing) program as a way of cutting expenses and also because we believe the CAP program is the best,” Thomas said. “We didn’t have a clue that the state was going to cut the CAP program. So now we have no student assessment program. . . . I think it’s also a blow to the state’s education because CAP testing is truly state of the art and has drawn praise from all over the nation. It’s something California was a leader in.”

Administered each year to third-, sixth-, eighth- and 12th-grade students across the state, the tests measure a school and a district’s performance relative to other schools and districts, rather than individual student performance. Most districts use other standardized tests to assess student achievement and evaluate instructional programs.

Still, the annual publicized CAP scores have become guideposts for parents seeking to judge their children’s education, for real estate agents trying to pitch homes and for business leaders shopping for schools or districts to support.

The state has bestowed honors--and cash prizes--on schools that have done well on CAP tests, and teachers and administrators at schools doing poorly have faced pressure to bring up the scores. Some say that led to the 1985 cheating scandal that involved altered answers on test sheets at 40 schools across the state.

The real importance of the CAP tests lies in their value as an indication of whether statewide educational reforms are working, and whether California’s students are improving or falling behind their counterparts in other states.

While he bemoaned the loss Wednesday, state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig said that the cut is only in effect for the coming year and that he has no doubt the testing program will be restored next year. “The next governor is going to put this back in, there’s no question about that. But we’ll miss a year, and that will slow us down.”

The CAP dispute is a resumption of the personal battle that has raged, off and on, between Deukmejian and Honig since both took office in 1983.

When the cuts were announced on Tuesday, Honig exploded, calling them “spite cuts, made out of anger and vindictiveness.”

He said the governor was punishing the schools because they had successfully lobbied the Legislature not to suspend Proposition 98 for the coming year. (Proposition 98 guarantees that public schools and community colleges will receive at least 40% of General Fund revenues each year.)

But Michael Frost, Deukmejian’s chief of staff, said Wednesday that Honig’s remarks were “intemperate.” The Administration supports the CAP program but wants it financed in a different way, Frost said.

“We’re in favor of funding the CAP program, but it ought to be funded out of Proposition 98,” not out of the regular Department of Education budget, Frost said.

Frost said the Administration will introduce legislation to make the change when the Legislature reconvenes next week.

But Department of Education officials said the legislation that implemented Proposition 98 specifically excludes money for the CAP program and Honig intends to fight the cut in court.

Some suggest that the hue and cry over the temporary loss of CAP testing is out of proportion to the significance of the tests.

“It’s a loss we can live with,” said Los Angeles Unified School District board President Jackie Goldberg. “It’s something we can do again a year from now and still be all right.”

As CAP scores have gone up in recent years, Honig has basked in the glow over the apparent success of reforms, including tougher graduation standards and a more demanding curriculum. After Honig was elected in 1982, he began to push CAP testing as a good way to determine whether the educational reforms he was promoting were having any effect.

CAP came to be associated with the national drive for more school accountability.

“One of the hallmarks of the effort to improve schools has been accountability,” Honig said Wednesday. The CAP tests have served “to focus attention on where schools needed improvement. Without it, you’re flying blind.”

Many California business leaders, distressed by the poor skills of the work force, support the idea of stronger accountability and the California reforms, including CAP, in particular.

But there were also critics.

Some, like Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara) dislike most testing because it lowers the self-esteem of some students. Districts that did badly on the tests did not like them and some thought they represented further state intrusion into local school affairs.

Nevertheless, CAP testing began replacing the old standardized achievement tests in 1972. The old tests, said Michael Kirst, professor of education at Stanford University, “tended to produce a Lake Wobegon effect--all the children in every school district turned out to be above average.”

In California, as in few other states, Kirst said, CAP made it possible to align the curriculum frameworks that were adopted by the State Board of Education with textbooks and other instructional materials.

In recent years CAP tests have made another dramatic change--from largely multiple-choice tests to what is called “performance testing,” which requires students to write essays, perform lab experiments and solve mathematical problems.

Many educators now believe that this kind of testing better prepares students for jobs in a high-tech world.

Trombley reported from Sacramento and Banks reported from Los Angeles.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE: The state spending plan does contain a few gems for Orange County. B6