CLAS Tests: Here’s What’s Really in Them

Open the top-secret 1994 California Learning Assessment System test and here’s some of what you’ll find:

“Do you think that people today are as strong as their parents and grandparents were?” CLAS asks fourth-graders. “Why do you think some teen-agers and their parents have problems communicating?” the test queries eighth-graders.

And for 10th-graders: “Why do you think people can seem to be shy in one setting and outgoing in another? . . . Why is it that some people appear unable to talk at all?”

These are just three of hundreds of questions, tasks and instructions contained in the language arts portion of the state’s new student performance test, widely praised by educators but also under attack as too personal, too political and too vague to gauge student achievement.

Though the tests have not yet been released to the public, copies obtained by The Times show much of what critics suspected: provocative readings about race, poverty and family relationships coupled with repeated requests for children’s opinions and reflections on personal experiences.

But the exams also show that rumors about CLAS have often exaggerated and distorted its content, focusing on the most sensitive passages and ignoring the context in which issues are discussed.

“We’re starting to hear things that parents say their kids say are on the test where that just isn’t the case,” state Department of Education spokeswoman Jan Agee said recently.

Radically different in style from older standardized tests, the new assessment system seeks to gauge what students know through a variety of methods: from doodling exercises and group discussions to essays that require students to connect literary themes to their lives.

On various versions of the tests, students are prompted to display their writing skills by discussing a time when they did or said something they now regret, dreaming up a list of TV programs, or describing someone who does not go along with the crowd.

Instead of computer-scanned answer sheets, CLAS is graded by specially trained schoolteachers.

More than 1 million children in 7,500 schools took CLAS this spring, at a cost of $26 million, amid a chorus of criticism from conservative Christian groups, some educators and hundreds of parents. Opponents contend that CLAS is too subjective to serve as a valid testing tool and that the language-arts segments violate state law by questioning children about morality without parental permission.

State education officials and supporters in industry and academia insist that the tests are necessary to revive public education in California and will improve schools. The pointed questions gauge analytical thinking and prompt students to write passionately, officials say.

Courts have denied that CLAS violates state law and have ordered school districts to administer the exams, but the Department of Education responded to public pressure last month by allowing parents to withdraw their children from the exams. At least one district, Fullerton Elementary, has refused to give the exams this year despite threats of legal action by the state.

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The Department of Education has refused parent requests to view the tests, arguing that statewide tests are always confidential to protect the integrity of the exam.

Now that CLAS testing is complete, state officials plan to release portions of CLAS next month to public libraries. But so far actual test questions have not been revealed.

Each student taking the test receives a sealed envelope containing a Student Information Form, a set of color-coded exam booklets sporting pictures of happy-faced students and stickers with bar-code labels to ensure secrecy.

The information forms pose questions on ethnic background, parent occupation, English-language proficiency and achievement levels, as well as inquiries about how many hours children spend each day doing homework and watching television.

Fourth-, eighth- and 10th-graders take tests in language arts and math, while fifth-graders take exams in science and history/social science.

The language arts component, by far the most controversial, contains separate booklets for reading, group work and writing.

CLAS features stories about California youth by prominent authors--including Maxine Hong Kingston and Dick Gregory--plus classics like an Aesop’s fable, a poem by John Updike and a piece from Richard Wright’s “Black Boy.”

The readings deal with difficult themes: discrimination, fear, dreams, homelessness, hunger, dysfunctional families, religion, crime and death.

After reading his or her assigned selection, each student is asked for an initial response to the story, and given space for “ideas, questions or opinions.” Later, there is space for them to “write anything else . . . what it means to you, what it reminds you of, how it relates to your own life.”

In between are a variety of exercises: “double-entry journals,” in which students copy passages and respond to them and “open minds” or “thought balloons,” in which students sketch drawings and images or jot down a few words that show characters’ feelings.

On some versions of the test, there is space for students to draw posters depicting a scene from the story. On others they are asked to identify similarities and differences between two parts of a reading and diagram them in overlapping circles.

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Students spend the second day of testing in groups, performing another half-dozen exercises in which they reflect on the previous day’s readings and take notes to prepare for writing. The writing segment consists of one essay connected to the reading but exploring a broader topic.

Here is a closer look at the exams given to each grade.

10TH GRADE

Each student reads one of these selections: Kingston’s memoir of her childhood as a Chinese immigrant; a story about a son’s changing image of his father; one boy’s recollection of his friendship with his Spanish-speaking great-grandmother, and a pair of poems about heroic athletes.

In an excerpt from “The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts,” Kingston tells of her silence in American school and her lively chatter during evening Chinese school. In one of the most often criticized passages of the entire CLAS exam, the author recalls her mother slicing underneath her tongue--”so that you would not be tongue-tied”--but the test later asks students whether they believe Kingston’s tongue was ever actually cut.

In groups, students are instructed to “think about a time in your own life when you were unable to speak, and a time when you were talkative or noisy” and discuss those memories. The writing assignment asks why children “feel unable to speak or to have nothing to say.”

Swedish author Par Lagerkvist’s “Father and I” chronicles a walk along the railroad tracks. The boy in the story becomes frightened as night falls, and his father soothes him by reminding him of God. But the boy quivers, convinced that God “too was horrible.”

In individual and group exercises, readers are told to think “about how most high-school students relate to their parents or other adults,” and “how a changing relationship can be important in a person’s life.” Some students are asked to write essays interpreting the relationship between father and son, while others are told to describe an incident “from which you learned something important about yourself.”

A third reading for 10th-graders is “The Horned Toad,” by Gerald Haslam, which opens with a bilingual conversation among members of a California family. In the reading, a Spanish-speaking woman chastises her great-grandson for removing a toad from its home. When the old lady dies, the boy remembers this lesson, and insists that she be buried where she had lived.

This test includes a supposed essay contest titled “The Relationship Between Where We Live and Who We Are.”

Updike’s “Ex-Basketball Player” is paired with “Memoirs of an Athlete Dying Young,” by A.E. Housman, to form the final 10th-grade reading. Here, exercises concern achievement, with the caveat that “achievements can be public (an honor or award) or private (something only you know about).”

EIGHTH GRADE

Middle-school students receive two more language arts booklets than fourth- and 10th-graders.

“Reading for Information” has three nonfiction passages (about Louis Pasteur, polar bears and Dorothea Dix), followed by multiple-choice questions requiring close reading. For “Independent Writing,” students must write a letter to help an aunt and uncle dress as “typical teen-agers” for a costume party.

But the largest source of debate is still the reading, group work and writing portions, in which eighth-graders use one of six coming-of-age stories, most of which deal with ethnicity.

Gregory’s “Not Poor, Just Broke” tells of a fatherless black second-grader trying to impress a girl with a big donation to the charity pot--only to be shamed when his teacher points out that he receives money from the pot.

In “Looking for Work,” Gary Soto revisits a poor, 9-year-old Latino desperate to live like Beaver Cleaver’s family. Morley Callaghan writes of a mother’s disappointment in her son, who steals from the drugstore where he works, in “All the Years of Her Life.” And “What I Want to Be When I Grow Up,” by Martha Brooks, chronicles bus rides to the orthodontist by a sarcastic, judgmental teen-ager.

But the two selections that have raised the most ire from critics are “Black Boy” and Marta Salinas’ “The Scholarship Jacket.”

The excerpt from Richard Wright’s award-winning novel opens with a stark passage about a child’s severe hunger. Wright’s mother sends him to the store for food, but a gang beats him up and steals his money. She sends him back into the street with a stick, instructing him not to return until he has the groceries.

“I fought to lay them low, to knock them cold, to kill them so that they could not strike back at me,” Wright remembers in the story. “The boys scattered, yelling, nursing their heads in utter disbelief. . . . The parents of the boys rushed into the streets and threatened me, and for the first time in my life I shouted at grown-ups.”

Students read “Black Boy” along with the Stephen Spender poem “My Parents,” then “write an essay . . . speculating about the reasons some parents try too hard to protect their children from the outside world.”

Salinas’ autobiographical story shows her as a poor Latina eighth-grader who is first in her class, eager to win the valedictorian’s jacket. The girl--called Martha at school and Marta at home--overhears two teachers talking about giving the jacket to the second-place student, a white girl whose father is on the school board and owns the only store in town.

Then the principal tells Martha that the scholarship jacket will cost $15; Martha’s grandfather refuses to pay, saying a scholarship jacket should not be bought. Ultimately, Martha does win the jacket free.

In response to the story, students fill in a chart of “problems at school,” then write an essay “about a person you listen to and respect.”

FOURTH GRADE

For elementary-school students, the print on the exam booklets is larger, but the literature addresses similar themes. There are seven different reading tests, including poetry, a biographical sketch of Rosa Parks, folk tales and short stories.

Two stories by Cynthia Rylant show the tragedy of homelessness, followed by group and writing exercises about loneliness.

“Angel Child, Dragon Child,” by Michele Maria Surat, depicts a Vietnamese girl who is shunned at school for not speaking English, but eventually makes a friend who helps her raise money to bring her mother to America. Students are then asked to write a booklet giving advice to new students at school.

Author Tomie dePaola’s “Now One Foot, Then the Other” tells a touching tale of a grandfather who teaches a little boy to walk, then has a stroke. The boy--named for the old man--then teaches the grandfather to walk.

“Pretend your school is giving a ‘Helping Hand Award,’ ” the test instructs. “Write about a time when you helped someone else.”

In “Fireflies!” a girl runs outside to catch the lightning bugs she sees out her window, then notices them struggling inside her jar and sets them free. After reading Julie Brinckloe’s story, students draw pictures of what they see out a window at home, and “what you might see if you looked out (a) wishing window into the world as you wish it to be.”

The three other fourth-grade tests have pairs of readings.

On one exam, there are two folk tales about loneliness: “How the Leopard Got His Spots,” from Africa, and “Bird That Sings Sad Songs,” a Navajo Indian myth. Students must create a conversation between animal characters in the two tales, then “write about what it is like to be by yourself.”

Similar selections are on a second test, with Leo Lionni’s “Frederick” and Aesop’s fable “The Grasshopper and the Ant.” Frederick, a field mouse, gathers “sun” and “color” and “words” while his comrades gather food for winter, then exchanges beautiful images for something to eat. But the grasshopper dances all summer, then begs in vain for the ant to share its food.

Finally, there is an account concerning Parks and the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott, paired with a Margaret Walker poem about black female ancestry.

“Think about a rule at your school--on the playground, in the cafeteria, or in the classroom--that you think needs to be changed,” the test instructs, picking up the protest theme. “Write a letter to the principal about a school rule you want changed.”

CLAS Readings

In the state’s new standardized tests, students read literature selections--many of them coming-of-age stories by prominent California authors--then respond in group discussions, informal exercises and essay writing. The following is a list of the reading selections on the 1994 California Learning Assessment System:

GRADE 10 * “To an Athlete Dying Young,” A.E. Housman, and “Ex-Basketball Player,” John Updike * “Father and I,” Par F. Lagerkvist * “The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts,” Maxine Hong Kingston (excerpt) * “The Horned Toad,” Gerald Haslam (excerpt)

GRADE 8 * “The Scholarship Jacket,” Marta Salinas * “Not Poor, Just Broke,” Dick Gregory * “Looking for Work,” Gary Soto * “Black Boy,” Richard Wright (excerpt), and “My Parents,” Stephen Spender * “What I Want to Be When I Grow Up,” Martha Brooks * “All The Years of Her Life,” Morley Callaghan

GRADE 4 * “Angel Child, Dragon Child,” Michele Maria Surat * “Frederick,” Leo Lionni, and “The Grasshopper and the Ant,” Aesop * “Lineage,” Margaret Walker, and excerpt from Rosa Parks biography, Eloise Greenfield * “Fireflies!” Julie Brinckloe * “How the Leopard Got His Spots,” African folk tale, and “Bird That Sings Sad Songs,” Navajo folk tale retold by Alice Putnam * “An Angel for Solomon Singer” and “All the Stars in the Sky,” Cynthia Rylant * “Now One Foot, Now the Other,” Tomie dePaola

Source: California Learning Assessment System