To Test or Not to Test, That Is the Question

Hoping to reduce the number of college freshmen in its remedial classes, California State University wants to test thousands of high school juniors in English and math so these students can brush up on any deficient skills before they enroll in college.

But the university’s plans have hit a snag.

Gov. Gray Davis has shelved Cal State’s proposal to expand its pilot testing program to the 200 high schools in California that send the most students in need of remedial work to state universities.

To be sure, Davis supports Cal State’s effort to help fix California’s schools on many fronts.

Among other things, his revised budget would give Cal State a requested $5 million to dispatch about 120 university faculty members into the high schools to help teachers improve their writing and math instruction to juniors.

The plan for this “intensive” outreach program is to link up Cal State faculty with about 800 high school teachers, five hours a week for 30 weeks.

The governor also is willing to provide another $4 million to increase the number of Cal State students sent into the high schools as tutors, as well as develop special short-term remedial classes for high school students who need extra help.

But the governor’s office has deleted a request for $6 million to subsidize the tests for high school juniors who are presumably bound for college.

The reason? The governor fears that high school students may feel overwhelmed by too many tests, including the Stanford 9, Golden State exams, SATs, Advanced Placement tests, as well as the Davis-pushed high school exit exam.

The governor’s education office also would like to see Cal State faculty and tutors be well established in these 200 high schools before students are tested.

“It is such a disservice to kids, if you test them and you don’t have the services in place to help them,” said a spokeswoman for Education Secretary Gary K. Hart.

Yet from the viewpoint of Cal State officials, early testing is the linchpin of their plans to reduce the embarrassingly high numbers of students who need remedial work.

Without such a test, Cal State officials ask, how will high school students know they aren’t ready for college-level work?

“We are very anxious for the early testing,” said Allison Jones, Cal State’s senior director of academic affairs. “I don’t know how you effectively deliver remedial instruction in high school if you don’t understand a student’s strengths and weaknesses.”

Charles B. Reed, chancellor of the 22-campus system, is disappointed that Cal State probably will not have the money this year to give college placement tests to tens of thousands of high school juniors.

“The initial reaction is it is too much testing,” Reed said. “I understand their concerns.”

But after Sacramento officials learn more about this test, Reed said, they recognize its importance. He expects the demand for such early testing to spread in the high schools too, as educators become better acquainted with its potential.

For now, he said, Cal State will have to focus on helping those 200 high schools that send the most remedial students to Cal State campuses. There is plenty of testing data--culled from incoming freshmen--to zero in on the schools that could benefit the most from Cal State faculty advisors and tutors.

In recent years the university has vastly improved its own testing program for its freshmen.

It now corrals virtually all incoming freshmen for English and math placement tests and the results have been dismaying: Fifty-four percent of this year’s freshman class was unprepared for college-level math, and 47% lacked the writing skills needed for college English courses.

These freshmen were then required to enroll in remedial classes, which one frustrated student described as “running in place.”

Although students must pay as much for these courses as others, they do not earn credit toward a degree. So Cal State officials hatched a plan to make sure students learn what they should in high school.

In pilot projects at selected schools statewide, Cal State last fall gave diagnostic English and math tests to high school juniors to help determine what they needed to work on this year.

This spring, these juniors are taking Cal State’s English and math placement tests, (the same test given to incoming college freshmen). If the juniors pass, Cal State officials will honor the accomplishment as their ticket out of remedial classes. If they fail, then high school teachers and students would know what they need to work on during the senior year.

Linda MacDonnell, director of instructional services for Orange County’s Department of Education, has joined a growing list of educators enthusiastic about such testing.

About 120 juniors volunteered at Huntington Beach High and Los Alamitos High to take placement tests, she said. They are now eagerly awaiting the results.

“The university is so willing to work with us to make sure we sent them students who are well prepared,” she said. “Our goal is the same: to get rid of the headline that says 50% of the students in the CSU system need remedial work. That’s really too high.”

The strength of these tests, Jones said, is that teachers and parents will know which students are on track for college.

Besides the math diagnostic tests at the 200 low-performing schools, the requested $6 million also would pay for 45,000 juniors at these schools to take an essay exam to determine if they have college-level writing skills.

If the money isn’t forthcoming, Cal State officials expect to make the essay exam available on its World Wide Web site. But students would have to shell out about $20 to pay for the tests and the Cal State faculty who grade them.

“We have no idea how many students would do it if they had to pay for it,” Jones said.