L.A., Long Beach Schools Agree to National Testing

Rejecting pervasive doubts about the role of national tests in education, 15 major school districts, including those in Los Angeles and Long Beach, signed on Friday to President Clinton’s call for U.S. academic standards, agreeing to start testing fourth-graders for reading and eighth-graders for math before the end of the century.

Accusing many of the nation’s governors of “dragging their feet,” Clinton applauded the school districts--which in California also include Fresno’s--for taking a step “that would have been literally unthinkable” just a few years ago.

Voluntary national testing remains a highly controversial issue in many states, with officials questioning everything from the type of examinations that would be administered to the political fallout that could result from poor scores.

Only seven of the nation’s governors have embraced Clinton’s idea. And school districts in 39 states have been unwilling so far to participate in any national plan.

A spokesman for California Gov. Pete Wilson--one of those who has steered clear of Clinton’s testing initiative--gave voice to some of the skepticism that surrounds the plan. Responding to Friday’s announcement, Wilson press secretary Sean Walsh said: “We’re all for testing. . . . But what kind of testing is this?”

Indeed, the details of how the tests will be created and administered, who pays for them and who has access to the results have yet to be worked out.

Still, Friday’s announcement broke a logjam of sorts, with the White House winning the support of schools in six of the nation’s seven biggest cities, including the three largest districts--New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The 15 school systems that agreed to implement the approach account for 7% of the nation’s fourth- and eighth-graders, the White House said.

“I believe that the single most important thing we can do to give our children a world-class education is to insist on high national standards, so that we make sure we have done everything we can to see that every single child learns to succeed in the exciting world of the 21st century,” Clinton told a convention of the National Assn. of Elementary School Principals in Washington on Friday.

Principals from around the country received the president’s remarks with generous applause and standing ovations.

First announced in his State of the Union address in February, the Clinton proposal challenged local school districts to measure the progress of children against a national bar, with parents, teachers, principals and curricula being held to answer when students failed to hit the mark.

Children are now tested by local districts, but there are no prevailing national performance standards. Some educators and examination experts have warned that national testing could be fraught with problems. For instance, they questioned whether it is possible to test every fourth- or eighth-grade student in the country on a single day and, if not, how to prevent the answers from leaking out.

Officials from the Los Angeles Unified School District, which represents 668,000 children, said they were ready to measure their students against a national barometer and deal with the results.

“Some of our students will do very well and some of them won’t,” said Ronald Prescott, associate superintendent of the district. “Urban school districts have more students at risk--some students who don’t speak English, some students who will probably have more difficulty with some parts of the test. But it’s important that we find out and do something about it.”

Referring to the frustration many parents have expressed about the state of public education, Prescott added: “Before, everybody just wanted to fire everybody else and start over. Well, we’ve done that and it didn’t work. There is no magic bullet to solve this. The answer is just hard work. We need to sit down again and teach kids how to read.”

Times staff writers David Lesher in Sacramento and Richard Lee Colvin in Los Angeles contributed to this story.