District Is Absent From CLAS : Education: Statewide scores don’t include Antelope Valley Union, leaving parents and educators with no means of comparison.

When statewide school test scores were published last week, letting parents see how their campuses stacked up against others in California, one high-desert district had nothing to show but a line of asterisks.

In the Antelope Valley Union High School District, where widespread protests pegged portions of the California Learning Assessment System as intrusive and inappropriate, so few students took the exam that no figures were compiled for the area.

Parents, whether for or against the CLAS test, thus have no way to determine how their schools compare to others in the state.

“I think it was a shame,” said Bill Olenick, one of only two high school board members who endorsed the CLAS test last year. “I think we missed a golden opportunity to have that base of comparison with other districts throughout California. This was our opportunity--and we blew it.”

Next year, the scoreless Antelope Valley will have plenty of company. The CLAS uproar that erupted in this area and snowballed all the way to Sacramento has thrown statewide school testing, dating back more than two decades, into limbo.

Gov. Pete Wilson has vetoed any additional CLAS funding, and no other statewide exam will take its place during this school year.

In the wake of all this, Antelope Valley educators and school board members were divided last week on the issue of state standardized testing.

Sue Stokka, one of the three school board members who objected to the CLAS test, believes student progress can be adequately tracked at the local level, without statewide exams.

“I don’t think we needed them to know there was a problem,” she said. “I don’t think anyone needs them if you see what’s going on in the classroom.”

Stokka added: “We have measurements, and we know exactly where the students are. They’re coming to us from the elementary schools with weak writing skills and poor reading comprehension, on the whole.”

The district can address these problems by revamping its curriculum “and putting back emphasis on the basic skills,” Stokka maintained.

Board member Billy Pricer, who also opposed the CLAS test, agreed, but he believes an appropriate statewide test could help local educators see how they measure up.

“I think we’re pretty good at monitoring ourselves at this point,” Pricer said. “But I think it is healthy to have competition to come up to those standards.”

He said he might not object to a new statewide exam if it provides a score for each student--not just for schools and districts. “If you’re just testing by district, it’s just a horse race,” Pricer said. “What are you doing for the individual child?”

Even without a statewide test, the Antelope Valley district has other tools to measure student progress, Supt. Robert Girolamo said. All incoming freshmen take the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills, he said, and its results are used to help place them in the appropriate classes.

Students who score in the lower 35% on this test must take it again the following year, he said.

Girolamo said he also doesn’t believe statewide tests produce useful results, particularly when they don’t provide individual scores.

But Kathleen Parks, an English teacher at Quartz Hill High School, said statewide testing can push faculty members to do a better job.

“One of the purposes of the CLAS test was to improve instruction in the classroom,” Parks said. “By taking the onus of a statewide assessment off of teachers, you are also relieving them of pressure to improve their instruction.

“Nobody wants their students to come out looking bad” on statewide tests.

Parks also pointed out that local educators must answer to the people who pay for public education.

“When the taxpayers of California invest billions of tax dollars into education, they have a right to know whether their money is being spent effectively,” she said. “And the only way to do that is through statewide assessment testing.”