Don’t Let CLAS Die in a Political Deadlock : Education: Let’s continue to back these reforms, which foster thinking, instead of rote learning and memorization.

The California Legislature and governor will soon decide whether to throw out or improve California’s new assessment system for K-12 pupils. The controversial “test” is called the California Learning Assessment System (CLAS).

CLAS is an important piece of the reform process in California schools. Although CLAS has experienced difficulties during its development, building an assessment system is complex and funding for continued refinement and testing are critical to CLAS’ long-term success.

Some amendments to the original design are needed, and a bill by Sen. Gary Hart (D-Santa Barbara) provides for some of the needed changes. Gov. Wilson has “set aside” funding for new pupil assessments pending the Legislature’s actions in revising the program. A political deadlock on this issue would be catastrophic.

The new assessment system is unlike any K-12 tests that most members of the public have encountered. It is fundamentally different from the traditional multiple-choice tests that report pupil comparison scores based on statistical averages. CLAS challenges students to think about and derive several potential answers to complex problems and uses open-ended responses. Trained evaluators judge the answers based on objective standards.

The traditional testing programs used in other state and national programs have a number of long-acknowledged and well-known deficiencies. These tests have been unable to assess pupils’ abilities to solve math and science problems, write persuasive essays, understand the tone and mood of characters in complex novels, synthesize and analyze data, make inferences and design creative solutions. Most testing focuses on factual recall, memorization of math formulas and one correct answer. CLAS is a response to these weaknesses.

Testing in this new form allows students to demonstrate knowledge--how they wrestle with problems and consider competing ideas. Implemented across the state, this form of assessment allows schools to understand their progress on outcomes that are based on performance. More important, this focus is consistent with school reform efforts to improve the integration of content and skills in the classroom. This change is being successfully demonstrated in California and is consistent with Goals 2000, the new federal legislation to improve schools across the country.

The ambitious project to introduce CLAS into the schools in 1993 has had two setbacks. One has centered on a question of the content of the tests; the second has been a set of technical problems related to the administration and scoring of the tests. CLAS has been challenged by some who object to the novels selected for analysis and the pupil responses designed to express an understanding of the emotions of characters. Moreover, opponents contend that the scoring is not objective. Indeed there is no machine-tabulated single-score answer. As a solution, the state will have to monitor the content of questions with assistance from educators and parents. But disagreements on the content of test questions should not stand in the way of state-of-the-art assessment development.

The technical glitches with scoring are another matter. In implementing CLAS, designers were given overly optimistic deadlines. CLAS scoring was not able to provide reliable and valid scores for each California school in 1993. There were too many “bugs” that needed to be resolved in the scoring and sampling system. For example, while CLAS may soon be able to reliably report scores for schools, reliably reporting individual student scores will require significant additional development. This may take several years.

A recent technical review panel of university experts from around the United States has provided some solutions to these problems. While the experts “applaud the energy and imagination that have gone into CLAS to this point,” they “advise against embarking on large-scale student-by-student reporting until CLAS has demonstrated its ability to deliver consistently dependable reports on schools.”

The California State Education Department should have made it clear that CLAS was in a test-run stage. But these mistakes should not cause California to abandon this assessment program.

Determined efforts are needed by political and education leaders to insist on educational quality in California. CLAS is part of the agenda to improve that quality. We encourage those who stand for continued improvement and quality to support additional refinements as development of this assessment system continues.