Schools to Switch to New Testing Program : Education: The system will focus on ‘performance-based’ scoring. It will cost three times as much as CAP exams it replaces.

Ventura County elementary and high school students will switch over to a new statewide testing program next month--a move hailed by state officials as a breakthrough in education but criticized by some teachers as a waste of money.

The new California Learning Assessment System phases out the old California Assessment Program, or CAP test, which has been given to elementary and secondary students since the early 1980s.

The biggest difference is that CLAS will move beyond multiple choice answers and more toward “performance-based” testing.

For example, students will be able to earn credit for demonstrating how they solved a math problem rather than simply providing the correct answer.

The test may also require students to conduct science experiments or work in small groups to share interpretations of an assigned text. In general, the new test will include more oral and written tasks.

But some Ventura County school officials are already questioning the cost of grading and administering the new test. The $14-million price tag this year is expected to increase to more than $27 million next year, when other parts of the test are phased in. This is three times what the CAP test cost.

“If it’s going to cost us $20 million more, this is not the right time to do it,” said John Gennaro, a sixth-grade teacher at Balboa Middle School in Ventura. “But no one has ever accused anyone in the education department in Sacramento of being logical in their thinking.”

Gennaro, who is also president of the Ventura Unified Education Assn., said many of the teaching methods promoted by the test are already being used in the classroom. He said in light of the recent cutbacks in education spending, he would prefer to see the money used to hire more teachers and increase salaries.

“Teachers have to earn a living,” Gennaro said, noting that teachers in his district are entering their fourth year without a pay raise. “They have the professional right to expect an adequate wage.”

But Marilyn Renger, a social studies teacher at Balboa who helped write some of the questions on the new test, said it is well worth the cost.

“If you want to change instruction in the classroom, then you have to change testing,” Renger said. “Teachers respond to that kind of pressure.”

Renger added that the test will also show whether students “can think and not just identify facts. It will test their ability to analyze and evaluate . . . you know, ‘Can you apply this to your life?’ ”

State Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara), who authored the 1991 legislation creating the new assessment test, said the purpose for the new test is to better prepare students for the working world. He said California is among a handful of states using new testing strategies to improve classroom instruction.

“In the real world, you don’t have multiple choice answers,” Hart said. “You have to solve problems where there might not be a right or wrong answer. What we want to do is give students more of a real world experience.”

But multiple choice questions will not disappear from the new test because they are still the best way to evaluate certain skills and multiple choice tests are much cheaper to give than performance-based tests, Hart said.

Defending the cost of the new test, he said spending $30 million to evaluate student performance is a small price to pay when the state is spending about $23.7 billion a year on elementary and secondary education.

“We have to have some accountability,” said Hart, a former schoolteacher who is considering a run for state superintendent of public instruction in 1994.

Hart acknowledged that some teachers may already be using performance-based teaching methods, but he said he is convinced from his own observations that many are not. He said he hopes the new test will change that.

Mary Jo Tennant, head of the English department at Redwood Intermediate School in Thousand Oaks, said the new test will benefit students and teachers.

“It’s going to force teachers to use new curriculum strategies,” she said. “And it’s going to force students to look at things differently” because the testing will require some group activities.

Tennant said the test will do a better job of bringing out the weaknesses of low and mid-level achieving students.

Still, Tennant and others urged the public to keep in mind that this is the first year for the new test and results may not be as high as they want them to be. Also, she said, it will be difficult to gauge student performance because there will be no other test to compare it to.

Finally, she stressed that while many teachers already use performance-based teaching, it is still a new concept, and it will take time before teachers and students are comfortable with it.

“Everybody’s doing the best they can,” she said.

In addition to a performance aspect, the new test will distinguish itself in many ways from the old CAP test.

In the past, students were tested on their reading, writing and mathematical abilities in the third, sixth, eighth and 12th grades. Eighth-graders were also tested in science and social studies.

Under the new program, students in fourth, eighth and 10th grades will be tested in writing, reading and math. Fifth-graders will be included next year and will be tested on science and social studies.

One of the most important changes may take place in 1994. That is when the state will begin reporting individual test results to students and their parents for the first time.

The results will measure how students are performing in comparison to others at their grade level. The old CAP test yielded average scores for schools and districts.

Other aspects of the CLAS system will be phased in over five years, said Dale Carlson, director of assessment for the state Department of Education.

The new system will eventually require that student portfolios be compiled to include the results of all CLAS tests, along with high school transcripts and selected work samples, Carlson said. The portfolios can be used after graduation by future employers or for placement at a college or university.

Middle and high school students will also have the opportunity to take end-of-course examinations, known as the Golden State Examinations, in all major subject areas. Testing, which is voluntary, is now limited to algebra and geometry.

Carlson said new standards will be set so that students who perform well on the math examination and eventually other subjects will not have to take an equivalent entrance test for college.

In addition, officials are developing a career-vocational exam, which would certify a student’s work skills in various fields.

Carlson said the most expensive part of the CLAS testing is the training of teachers and the grading of the exam. More than 1,500 teachers will gather at 25 sites, from San Diego to Eureka, to grade the tests this summer, with each putting in about five days. Teachers will be paid $100 a day and expenses.