Torrance Teachers, Parents at Odds Over Returning Tests to Students

For years, Ronald B. Cohen has been making a simple request. He wants to see the graded tests his three children have taken at South High School in Torrance.

As a father, he feels he has a right--even an obligation--to review graded tests with his children so he can see their mistakes and help strengthen their skills. But some teachers, hesaid, have been adamant that the tests could not go home.

“I just felt as if I’d been beaten down. Finally, my frustration boiled over,” he said.

And so Cohen helped ignite the testing debate that has teachers and their union wrangling with parents and administrators in the Torrance Unified School District.

It began last winter, when Cohen raised his concerns at a meeting between district administrators and a newly formed school-watchdog group named Torrance Parents for Quality Education.

The district responded with what Gail Wickstrom, assistant superintendent for educational services, calls “a statement that simply said that we believe that tests should be returned to students.” Teachers could consult their principals about exceptions, Wickstrom said.

So high school principals passed along this view to their teaching staffs at the start of the fall term.

Many Torrance teachers reacted with astonishment and anger. They say tests that leave the classroom may be circulated among students, making them useless for future classes unless they are rewritten. And some teachers also resent what they see as an edict from administrators.

Those views put them at loggerheads with parents, who are seeking a larger role in their children’s education.

Parents and teachers say that some Torrance high school teachers have routinely sent tests home but that others limit the kinds of tests they release and some refuse to let any of them leave the classroom. For instance, teachers often do not let students take home their final exams.

Officials in other school districts serving the South Bay say they do not have a formal policy on returning tests. Many administrators and principals said practices vary from teacher to teacher but, in general, they said they believe that most tests are being sent home.

The Torrance Teachers Assn., the teachers’ union, has come out firmly against a requirement to return all tests to students.

Although it does not oppose the review of tests in the classroom, the union said in a newsletter that standardized tests, final exams and “individually designed tests refined after several years of use” would become useless if students take them home.

“Once the test goes out, it is no longer of any value whatsoever. It becomes invalid,” said Carl Strong, social studies chairman at Torrance High School.

But three school board members said in interviews that they would like to see tests returned.

“You’d have to go a long way to convince me it’s that much of a hassle to re-create an exam,” said David Sargent, school board vice president, who recalls getting tests back when he was a high school student.

Said board President Owen Griffith: “I am leaning toward providing the tests for the students so they can use them to learn from the mistakes they’ve made.”

Trustee William Blischke said he believes tests should be returned so students or their parents can learn from them. But he added that he understands that creating a valid test is difficult.

District officials said they do not believe teachers are constantly reusing tests. But some teachers said they do reuse questions and sometimes whole tests. And a petition from teachers at West High School states: “Teachers are not being lazy when they give the same test over a period of time; they are following their professional judgment about the quality of the exam.”

Because teachers must use the same textbooks, multiple-choice or true-false tests of textbook material do not change dramatically from year to year, said William A. Franchini, Torrance Teachers Assn. executive director.

“Chapter 5 never changes, so the Chapter 5 test probably looks pretty much the same as it did for Chapter 5 the year before,” Franchini said.

This fall, Franchini said, most teachers are doing what they always have done with tests: “Some are returning them and some are not.” However, some teachers have become openly defiant, announcing at a recent parents’ night that they have no intention of sending tests home, he added.

Relations between the district and teachers are already tense. The teachers’ contract expired June 30. Teachers plan to picket the school board meeting Monday over the contract dispute, Franchini said.

The district has talked about giving teachers more say in district affairs, said Margaret Harrell, a West High School teacher in English and history. Any ultimatum that teachers return all tests flies in the face of that effort, she said, and “that’s one of the things that offends people most about this.”

Brenda McNamara, chairman of the West High School social studies department, said she allows students to take almost all of her tests home. In fact, in 21 years of teaching, she has had only one parent ask for a test she had not returned, she said. But McNamara was so disturbed by the ultimatum that she circulated a petition opposing a blanket policy--signed by 35 or 40 teachers in one day--and gave copies to school board members.

“You can say, pretty much unanimously, teachers oppose it,” added Larry G. Lorenz, chairman of the South High School social studies department, who is continuing his practice of not allowing tests out of the classroom.

“Most of us are not expert typists. Suppose you’re giving a two-chapter, 75-question test. How long does it take the average person to type that up, or make a second version? . . . I think the district, if they’re serious, should have an office downtown that generates tests.”

Lorenz questions whether those people advocating the return of tests have analyzed the real costs, or even the paper waste involved. While teachers can now hand out the same question sheets from year to year, the new rule would force them to create new tests, using more and more paper each time they gave a test, he said. “It would be an ecological disaster if it were done statewide,” he said.

But if children cannot bring tests home, parents are denied a role in their children’s education, parents counter.

“I’m saying that it’s wrong because it’s breaking the essential contract between the teacher, the child and the parent,” Cohen said.

When Cohen asked some teachers for access to the tests, he said, they suggested instead that he make an appointment to review the tests with them during workday hours--which he calls unreasonable for working parents.

Another Torrance parent, Linda Ferrara, complained that one of her daughter’s middle-school teachers “took it as an insult that I had asked for the test and said it was none of my business.”

In interviews, a handful of South High School students reported that some teachers distribute graded tests merely for review and collect them at the end of the class. The students said they would like to take the tests home.

Christopher Phillip, 16, a junior, described a test as a reflection of his own thoughts.

“I think my parents and I should have the right to know what I know,” Christopher said.

That point of view is shared by Cohen. “You can’t expect a child who’s not understanding some particular concept to come home and say, ‘Dad, I’m having a little trouble with Newton’s law of angular momentum, but I have rectilinear motion down pat.’ ”

Torrance Parents for Quality Education decided this week to conduct a survey of how teachers deal with returning tests in all four Torrance high schools, Cohen said Friday. Most school districts serving the South Bay report that they have no policy on the return of tests and that it has not been an issue in their districts. Officials in the El Segundo district could not be reached for comment.

Three statewide education associations did not know of a district where the return of tests has become an issue.

Administrators at eight South Bay high schools provided differing accounts of how teachers deal with tests.

At Inglewood High School, Principal Kenneth L. Crowe said teachers allow students to keep most regular classroom exams.

At Carson High School, Associate Principal Richard Mattingley said most tests are being returned. And at San Pedro High School, Principal Joe Viola said he is not aware of teachers who refuse to allow tests to leave the classroom. However, he added, “on a faculty of 100, there may well be some that do.”

At Palos Verdes High School in Palos Verdes Estates, different teachers and departments have different practices, said Jan Hillger, associate principal of curriculum. “It’s very much an individual situation.”

Practice also varies from teacher to teacher at Miraleste High School in Rancho Palos Verdes, said Associate Principal Lee Strauss. Some teachers always send tests home with students, and some don’t, she said.

“We also have tremendous budgetary constraints, and it’s expensive to run off tests,” she said. “We don’t have the luxury of running these materials all the time.”

Officials in several districts said they personally favor letting students take tests home.

“Why not?” said Patricia Boerger, administrative consultant with the Los Angeles Unified School District. “If you ask a doctor for your X-rays, they should give them to you.”

Educational experts say a move is under way nationally to involve parents more deeply in their children’s schooling. Joan Herman, associate director of the Center for the Study of Evaluation in the UCLA Graduate School of Education, said educators are also moving away from multiple-choice testing toward “more real-world problem-solving,” such as laboratory experiments, multimedia reports and working in a group to solve a problem.

Classroom tests should be used as “instructional vehicles,” which means sending them home when possible, said Richard E. Snow, professor of education and psychology at the Stanford University School of Education in Palo Alto.

That leaves the Torrance school board looking for an educationally sound middle ground. Some board members have discussed creating data banks of test questions to make test-writing easier. Teachers would use computers to shuffle questions and create new tests.

“It’s a great concept. (But) I don’t think it’s realistic,” said Franchini of the teachers union. “I don’t see the district investing in the equipment that would allow teachers to do it.”

The school board expects to take up the testing issue this month. In the meantime, both teachers and parents remain frustrated. And that, both sides agree, is unfortunate.

“This really shouldn’t be a war between a parent and a teacher,” said Ferrara, who has three children attending Torrance schools. “It should be a mutual desire to educate a child.”