CLAS Is Renamed; Future in Doubt : Education: Wilson may veto the $26-million budget item for the controversial testing system. Sen. Gary Hart has proposed legislation to meet opponents’ concerns.

California’s pioneering but controversial student achievement tests emerged from the state’s annual budget wars with a new name and an uncertain future.

By the time the Legislature sent this year’s budget to the governor, the California Learning Assessment System had become the California Comprehensive Testing Program. Funding for the tests--about $26 million--was included in the $57.3-billion budget, but Gov. Pete Wilson’s education adviser said she expects him to veto the expenditure and to continue pressing for changes in the exam system.

“The governor has made it very clear that until he sees significant reforms, he is not going to appropriate the money to continue the testing system,” Maureen DiMarco, Wilson’s secretary for child development and education, said this week. She was referring to statements Wilson made earlier in the year when he urged the Legislature to delete testing funds from the budget pending reforms.

DiMarco added, however, that the governor is committed to having “a comprehensive testing system” and predicted that he would authorize funding if new testing legislation proposed by Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara) can be adapted to satisfy Wilson’s concerns.

Hart’s legislation (SB 1273), which would reauthorize the statewide testing system for five years, has been heavily amended to address criticism by Wilson and others. It includes provisions for a wider role for parents and others in test development and review, prohibits questions about students’ sexual, moral or religious beliefs and requires that test items include a mix of question styles that probe “building block” skills as well as higher-order thinking.

A spokeswoman for Hart said her boss has worked hard to answer the governor’s concerns, and she expressed frustration over predictions that Wilson would blue-pencil funds for the system when he signs the budget.

Hart’s bill has been approved by the Senate and the Assembly Education Committee and is awaiting a hearing before the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

A veto would not hinder the scoring of this year’s exams to be done over the summer, but would halt further development of next spring’s series of tests, according to state Department of Education spokeswoman Susie Lange.

The 2-year-old student testing program, taken this spring by about 1 million public school students in fourth, fifth, eighth and 10th grades, has won California national recognition for its high standards and its probing of higher-order thinking skills--students’ ability to discuss and apply what they have learned. Educators see such testing systems as key elements in the school reform movement.

But the quickly developed system has been plagued with problems in administration and scoring and has been criticized for the contents of its reading and writing portions.

Religious conservatives, in particular, have charged that the language arts tests promote bad values and illegally invade students’ and their families’ privacy. The opponents brought lawsuits against several school districts. In the one case in which a hearing was held on the opponents’ complaints, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled that the tests do not improperly solicit information about religious beliefs, family morals or practices.

But the controversies over the test have continued, prompting efforts to shore up public confidence in it.

The efforts included the appointment of a panel of experts in statistics to evaluate scoring methods used in exams given in 1993, the first year of the program. Their report, scheduled to be aired this week at a meeting of the State Board of Education, has been delayed for about two weeks. Lange said the panelists told the department they need more time.

Meanwhile, a governor-requested evaluation of the financial, developmental and administrative aspects of the testing system is under way and is expected to be ready late next month, according to the state auditor’s office, which is conducting the evaluation.

The department of education is also making good on its promise in May to allow public examination of the current language arts exams once the school year’s testing cycle was completed. Beginning July 18, the reading and writing tests for grades four, eight and 10 will be available for review--but not to take or copy--for one month at 41 sites statewide.

In Southern California, the sites include all the county offices of education, as well as the headquarters for the Los Angeles Unified and Palmdale school districts. Besides the test questions, available materials include scoring guidelines, information about CLAS and how it was developed and samples of student work and scoring commentaries.