Choice of New Test for L.A. Schools Questioned

The Los Angeles Board of Education on Monday selected a new standardized test to measure student performance despite lingering questions about why the highest-priced test was chosen.

Although the final price tag remains uncertain, the Stanford Achievement Test--to be given beginning this spring to students in grades one through 10--will cost the district about $3.7 million this year. It replaces the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills, which had been used locally since 1984.

Although at least half the cost will be reimbursed by the state under a new testing law, teachers’ union President Day Higuchi, who served on an advisory committee that reviewed three possible tests, said he was floored by the final choice, which appears to exceed other options by at least $1 million.

“If all three tests are essentially the same, which [the district] said from the beginning,” Higuchi asked, “why did they pick the one that was the most expensive?”

District administrators said the Stanford test developed by Harcourt Brace was ranked significantly higher by dozens of teachers asked to review three exams and slightly higher by panels of parents and community members.

The officials said it is a little better match for the district’s recently established learning standards, which identify what students should learn at each grade level.

“It’s like an A+ student and an A student. . . . What is it finally that separates them?” Supt. Sid Thompson said. “It comes down to making a subjective decision.”

The final price of the exam will be negotiated during the coming months, although district staff have estimated that it would cost at least $3.7 million this year. State testing legislation signed by the governor in October offers districts $5 per tested student--which would provide about $1.8 million to Los Angeles Unified.

If an exam costs less than $5 per student, the state will allow any excess to be used for test-related costs, such as teacher training.

Board member David Tokofsky, who cast the sole dissenting vote Monday, said he objected to approving the test choice before a final price was determined, especially because the other two options appeared to be at least $1 million cheaper. That approach, he said, saps all negotiating power.

“It’s saying . . . ‘We’ve picked your test, now let’s negotiate,’ ” Tokofsky said. “It seems to me that’s lose, lose, lose.”

Both of the losing test companies have lodged complaints, according to confidential correspondence obtained by The Times. Tests are big business not only because the test contracts themselves are lucrative, but because they usually guarantee the publisher a significant amount of textbook sales in the district.

Riverside Publishing, owned by Houghton Mifflin, sent a letter to the superintendent and school board president last week complaining that the selection process was unfair. For one thing, a company vice president wrote in a Nov. 26 letter to the district, their less expensive Iowa Tests received the same ranking for cost as the higher-priced Stanford exam.

In earlier correspondence, representatives of CTB/McGraw-Hill expressed concern that their test, TerraNova, was disqualified because it was not included on a state-approved list.

Without advance state approval, Los Angeles Unified feared that it would forfeit the $5-per-student reimbursement. But McGraw-Hill pointed out that other California school districts have sought, and received, state waivers to be reimbursed for TerraNova.