Eastin Backs Clinton Plan on Standard Tests

Delaine Eastin, California’s schools superintendent, committed herself Wednesday to securing the state’s backing for President Clinton’s proposal for national tests in reading for fourth-graders and math for eighth-graders.

“I believe we will in fact prevail,” Eastin said after meeting with the president at the White House.

Although Clinton said California’s schools were on board, Eastin’s confident endorsement was more a battle cry than a guarantee that California schoolchildren will take the tests, which would be given for the first time in 1999.

A spokesman for Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, said the announcement was premature.

Dan Edwards said the governor favors the development of demanding academic standards and tests, but that it should be a state, not federal, responsibility.

“It’s good for the president to use the bully pulpit to talk about high standards, but we’re actually doing it in California,” Edwards said, referring to a commission that is putting together grade-by-grade academic standards, due next fall, to be followed by statewide tests.

Clinton’s initiative, unveiled in his State of the Union address two months ago, would for the first time give schoolchildren and their parents a national yardstick against which to measure performance. Now, states can measure performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, but districts and individual students cannot.

So far, Michigan, Maryland and North Carolina have endorsed the testing proposal, which is voluntary.

But before students in California see the tests, the State Board of Education--which is appointed by Wilson--would have to vote for participation. And the Legislature would have to approve the cost of $10 to $12 per pupil for administering the tests after the first year.

Eastin predicted that the board and the Legislature will approve the plan, but Wilson’s office was skeptical. Even if the board and the Legislature were to reject the national tests, individual districts could decide to administer them to students.

“This is not about the political ideology of adults,” Eastin said. “This is about the success of children in the next century.”

Failing to provide students with tools needed to compare themselves with those across the country--and the world--would leave American children at a disadvantage in the increasingly competitive international workplace, Eastin said.

“In a global economy, after all, it is not unreasonable for parents to ask, how do their kids measure up compared to those in Germany or in Korea or anywhere else in the world,” she said.

Clinton appeared eager to count the state as a supporter of his initiative. California’s 5.5 million schoolchildren represent 11% of the nation’s public school enrollment.

“Today, with California’s endorsement, states and school systems that educate nearly 20% of America’s schoolchildren are now on the road to measuring their students against those high standards,” Clinton announced, perhaps prematurely. “If any state understands the challenges we face in the 21st century in the global economy and an Information Age, it is surely California, our gateway to much of the world and the home of many of the industries that will shape our future.”

Also joining Clinton at the White House on Wednesday were representatives of California teachers unions, a parent from Pasadena, a reading teacher from Porterville and representatives of other state education groups.

To further bolster his program, Clinton invited representatives of the state’s high-tech industries--many of whom gathered at a school in San Jose to participate in the White House event via satellite--to get on board.

“Finding enough educated employees is our greatest challenge. It’s an acute issue,” said Marc Andreessen, co-founder and vice president of technology of Netscape Communications, one of 200 industry leaders who said they will help Clinton campaign for national standards and tests.

“It’s hard to improve something if you can’t measure it,” Andreessen said. “If we tried to run a business like this [without standards and testing], we clearly would fail.”

Andreessen and his colleagues said national tests would create the kind of competition needed to produce graduates qualified to hold the higher-wage jobs of the future.

“It will give parents a yardstick to judge their children’s progress,” said Kim Polese, CEO of Marimba, an applications technology company in Palo Alto.

But testing experts cautioned that the 90-minute tests would be too short to measure the range of skills needed to read well or attain mathematical competency. They also fear that the tests would overemphasize basic skills, causing teachers to put less time into lessons that require students to think critically or apply what they know.

Although the tests will be developed by private testing firms under contract with the U.S. Department of Education, they will be administered by states or individual school districts--or parents who choose to school their children at home.

To deflect concerns that the testing program represents a federal intrusion into education, test scores will not be collected nationally. Instead, scores would be reported by states and local districts that administer the tests.

The purpose of the testing program is to create a check on the standards that have been set by 48 states, which administration officials said are far too low.

They also hope that the standards will spur changes in teacher training, textbooks and other areas. “The purpose is not to give a test, the purpose is to motivate changes to increase opportunities for kids,” said Marshall Smith, acting deputy secretary of education. “The test is a lever to get there.”