Panel Urges Revival of CLAS Test : Education: The exam should be salvaged and its flaws corrected, research group says. The need for a new test by 1996 is called crucial.

The clashes over California’s CLAS test were unavoidable, a consequence of conflicting political and education goals and overly ambitious objectives. But the controversial measure of scholastic performance in elementary and secondary schools should be salvaged, with adjustments made to correct its flaws by next year, says a nonpartisan education research group at Stanford University and UC Berkeley.

The resurrection of the ill-fated testing program--which was axed last year amid cries that it was too subjective, probed too deeply into students’ private views and was poorly scored--is critical to the credibility of the state’s education reform efforts, Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) says in a report on public school conditions issued today.

And it is crucial, said PACE co-director Julie Koppich, that a new test be ready by 1996.

“The state cannot afford to have a long gap between assessments,” she said. “It would send the wrong signal--that we are not serious about assessing student performance and that we are not quite sure how to do it.”

The CLAS test, which was widely regarded nationally as a bold attempt to make standardized testing more meaningful, was created through the leadership of Gov. Pete Wilson, then-Sen. Gary K. Hart, who was head of the Senate Education Committee, and Bill Honig, who was state schools chief when the test was developed in 1991.

But, the PACE report notes, the testing process was unable to sustain that political coalition. Each of the three political leaders had different views of the exam’s chief purpose: Wilson was primarily interested in a test that would provide teachers and parents with individual student scores. Hart and Honig were more committed to improving school-level accountability and creating a new breed of “performance-based” testing.

This type of exam asks students to demonstrate mental tasks, such as showing comprehension of a text by writing about it instead of simply answering a multiple-choice question, but it is costly to develop, administer and score.

Ultimately, PACE found, Honig’s and Hart’s visions prevailed, setting up the clash that eventually led to the test’s demise, when Wilson vetoed the $26 million it would have cost to keep the program alive this year.

Maureen DiMarco, the governor’s chief education adviser, said she agrees with most of PACE’s observations. Developing a test that delivers individual student scores, instead of solely schoolwide scores, remains Wilson’s top priority, she said.

“Each student has to know how he or she is performing. It is not enough to know how the class or the school is doing,” said DiMarco.

Delaine Eastin, the newly elected state schools superintendent, was not available Tuesday. But she said through a spokeswoman that she agrees with “the overall assessment” by PACE, including the recommendation that a new test be developed by next year.

DiMarco added that she is hopeful that the state Department of Education, under Eastin’s direction, will agree with the need to provide students and parents with individual results.

But, Koppich said, the success of any future statewide assessment will depend to a large degree on whether the state’s top policy makers can reach philosophic accord.

In addition to the issue of individual vs. schoolwide test results, officials must resolve questions about whether the test should serve mainly as an informative diagnostic tool for students and teachers or as a regulatory device tied to school funding.

Koppich said that investing in a better testing system is one of the most critical education issues facing the state. She warned that school reform efforts in the last several years have been too piecemeal, and urged the state to embrace a more comprehensive approach to improve public education.

Reinstating a statewide testing system was one of 10 school reform recommendations the research group proposed today. These included calls to overhaul the system for paying teachers, restore local control over education funding, streamline the voluminous state Education Code, and determine whether widely touted efforts to give individual schools more decision-making power have led to gains in student achievement.