Eastin Reluctantly Picks Statewide Test Publisher

A Monterey-based division of a New York publishing firm received $30 million worth of potentially good news Friday when state schools Supt. Delaine Eastin reluctantly recommended that the company be selected to supply the standardized tests that 4 million California students are to take next spring.

Eastin’s recommendation now goes to the state Board of Education, which will review tests submitted by CTB/McGraw Hill as well as two other major publishers before selecting one of them Nov. 14. The board is to hear from the publishers next week and also will take advice from a panel of testing experts it appointed.

A law that Republican Gov. Pete Wilson pushed through the Legislature over the objections of many Democrats calls for the state to purchase a commercially available testing program to make it possible to compare the performance of students in grades two through 11 to those across the nation. California currently does not give statewide tests but most school districts give their own.

Eastin opposed the testing bill, urging the state to first develop detailed grade-by-grade “standards” for what students ought to know before creating a customized test. The first two sets of those standards, in reading and math, are awaiting action by the state Board of Education.

Although she opposed the bill, Eastin was required under its terms to report back to the board by a Friday deadline, naming her choice among three commercial testing programs seeking the contract.

In doing so, Eastin complained that the three testing series were all “seriously flawed” because they are not challenging enough, especially at the upper grades.

“None of them has the rigor, nor the breadth and depth of content, that California needs,” Eastin said.

She said she selected CTB/McGraw Hill’s “Terra Nova” testing system over those from Harcourt Brace Educational Measurement and Riverside Publishing because it more closely matches the proposed standards at the lower grades and because the company’s products already are widely used, making it easier to see whether students are making progress.

Few districts, however, are using “Terra Nova” tests because they were introduced only a year ago. Company officials said they are specially designed to mesh with colorful, graphics-driven textbooks and modern teaching techniques that emphasize the use of literature in reading instruction and calculators and problem solving--rather than computation--in math.

The Los Angeles Unified School District tested its students using CTB/McGraw Hill tests for many years before switching last year to ones published by Harcourt Brace.

The district trained teachers in how to give those tests, prepared brochures on them in Spanish, Armenian, Korean, Cantonese, Russian and Vietnamese and already has the actual test materials that were to be used in schools next spring.

If the state Board of Education follows Eastin’s lead, those materials will have to be returned, the teachers will have to be trained again and new parent brochures prepared.