SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO : Trustees to Study State Test Response

Capistrano Unified School District trustees are scheduled to consider a resolution today blasting test scores from the 1994 California Learning Assessment System.

Although the results won’t be released until late January or early February--and the district is expected to do well--the resolution claims that the 1994 CLAS test was badly flawed and mismanaged.

The result: meaningless scores for district comparison and a “waste of public funds,” the resolution contends.

“We want to disassociate ourselves with this unreliable data,” district spokeswoman Jacqueline Price said.

A state education official said that so far as he knows Capistrano Unified is the first school district to consider taking such a strong position.

“We would disagree with that,” said Fred Tempes, director of curriculum, instruction and assessment for the state Department of Education.

“I think we would be held equally to account for not publishing the results, having spent the money to administer the test.”

The state has spent $55 million over three years on the testing system, Tempes said.

Last year, the test came under fire from critics who contended that it invaded students’ privacy by asking personal questions in essay sections. Some school districts allowed parents to choose that their children not take the test.

Bill Habermehl, an assistant superintendent of instructional services for the Orange County Department of Education, said the 1994 CLAS results might be called into question because there was so much turmoil surrounding the test.

“It’s safe to say that the results will be somewhat controversial and I’m sure that no one wants to be subject to a comparison of districts that did or did not have a full complement of students taking the test,” Habermehl said.

Capistrano district officials plan to pursue their own testing system to measure students’ academic growth in basic skills over time, Price said.