Panel Urged to ‘Set Bar High’ for Learning

Invoking the example of a Los Angeles teacher who demands that his Koreatown fifth- and sixth-graders perform Shakespeare and learn algebra, Gov. Pete Wilson on Wednesday urged a state commission--asked to write specifications for what public school children should learn--to “set the bar high” and to finish its work rapidly.

Wilson said Rafe Esquith, a 15-year veteran of Hobart Elementary School who takes his students to England and elsewhere to perform with professional actors, “is supplying something that in too many schools in California has been lacking for too long . . . high standards of achievement.”

The governor told the Commission for the Establishment of Academic Content and Performance Standards that it has a duty to help ensure that students statewide are expected to work just as hard, which he said could make the difference between mediocrity and excellence in the public schools.

Wilson appointed the majority of the commission’s members as part of legislation designed to create a statewide testing system. The panel of business leaders and educators began meeting late last year amid widespread concern about national test results showing California lagging most of the nation in math and reading.

The commission has encountered logistic, legal and personnel problems and has struggled with philosophical differences among its members over how to improve the state’s standing--with some insisting on a traditional, back-to-basics approach rich in facts and formulas and others arguing for a greater emphasis on conceptual understanding.

Even so, the commission is hoping to finish a draft of its standards for reading and math in time for public hearings throughout the state at the end of June. The aim of “standards” in education is to write concise, objective statements of what students at each level should know as a guide for teachers, parents and students--for example, that students should understand the difference between fantasy and realism beginning in kindergarten and be able to write persuasively by the fourth grade.

During a brief statement Wednesday, after which he declined to take questions from commissioners, Wilson praised the panel but urged it to complete its work on reading standards in particular by no later than the end of the summer.

But Wilson also made a pitch for his proposal to begin testing every child in grades two through 11--to find out what they know--even before the commission completes its work.

“I don’t think it’s fair to cheat any more children,” Wilson told reporters. “I think kids are entitled to know, their parents and teachers are entitled to know, what they are learning as individuals. And without an individualized test we simply cannot do that.”

Rather than wait the two to three years it might take to develop a customized test based on the commission’s work, Wilson wants to spend $80 million--from revenues that by law must go to the public schools anyway--to purchase an existing standardized testing program.

“I have every confidence that an off-the-shelf test can in fact complement the work you are doing and be consistent with the kind of tough, challenging standards that you will eventually develop,” Wilson told the commission, answering concerns that he was undermining its work. “In no way should this step be interpreted as a retreat from . . . the new standards.”

The testing proposal has been temporarily shelved by Assembly and Senate budget panels, but Wilson said he will insist on its approval.

State Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin, who appointed some members of the standards panel and who is one of its members, agreed with Wilson that the state should quickly begin testing students. But she said students’ performance should be measured against the standards--which will help mold schools’ curriculum--rather than against a national average.

“Is this just an exercise we’re doing here or do we want to influence what children learn?” Eastin said. “Do we want our kids to be at the average of a nation that overall is not doing very well?”

Wilson said California needs mandatory testing both to provide scores for individual students and to measure the impact of the $1-billion program to reduce the size of classes--this year up to three grades from kindergarten through third grade--to no more than 20 pupils.

On Wednesday, San Francisco school officials released the first data showing that, at least in that school district, small class sizes appear to be helping children learn. First-graders there registered 18% higher reading scores and 12% higher math scores.

“Kids are learning better and faster because of the more individualized teacher attention they’re getting,” Wilson said. “I’m hearing the same story from teachers and parents throughout the state.”

During Wilson’s first term, the state’s recession caused school districts to make deep cuts in spending, average class sizes to rise and--in what some see as a related development--the state’s scores on national tests to bottom out. In the past few years, with the state’s economy rebounding, Wilson has been required by state law to pour billions of dollars more into education and is eager to see a turnaround before he leaves office at the end of 1998.

He said a new test, new standards and smaller class sizes would make it possible to “look back on this time as one of great reform, the beginning of a true educational renaissance in California and that clearly is a legacy we can all be very proud of.”