Reactions Mixed for State English Test

A new state-mandated test, designed to measure the progress of California’s 1.5 million students who are not fluent in English, is getting mixed reviews from school districts complaining that it costs too much time and money.

The California English Language Development Test is designed to streamline the assessment of such students, called English learners, and will be given every year.

It is supposed to give the state a way to see whether public schools are doing an effective job of teaching English. The test also provides schools with a uniform way of deciding when each student is ready to be placed in classes that demand better English skills.

But school officials complain that they have had to hire additional staff just to administer the tests, which include a one-to-one oral portion, and that the state barely begins to cover the increased cost.

And yet, they say, the state has not provided schools with the test results for their use. Perhaps most important, they say, it adds another layer of rigid testing requirements to a panoply of mandated exams.

“We need to have a balance,” said Esther Wong, assistant superintendent of planning assessment and research in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has administered more than 300,000 English-language tests since May.

“There is a time for assessment and there is a time for instruction, a time to learn before they are assessed again,” she said. “We are reaching that point. When is enough enough?”

Since the testing began, almost 2 million students statewide have been tested. Three-fourths of them were English learners already in the school system; 500,000 were new students who were not native speakers of English and who must be tested before enrolling in a school district.

State education officials agree that the new system has some wrinkles, but insist that a single statewide standard is important to determine which methods work, and to catch districts that may be neglecting their students.

“There had never been an instrument used annually that was consistent statewide to monitor students’ progress in acquiring English,” said Jeanette Spencer, the state Department of Education’s lead consultant for the language testing. “Students could be labeled English learners, and six years, eight years later, they were still English learners.”

Last year, two years after Proposition 227 curtailed bilingual education, the state Department of Education found that 38 of 209 districts surveyed lacked adequate English programs for their nonnative speakers, and 25 lacked qualified staff to provide basic courses. Federal and state laws require school districts to ensure the education of nonnative English speakers.

Most recently, federal civil rights investigators found that the Newport-Mesa Unified School District in Orange County did a poor job of assessing its English learners. The investigation discovered that the district had placed many of those students in regular classes without any academic support, or, conversely, kept fluent English speakers out of the more challenging classes for which they were ready. The district promised the federal government last month to fix the problems.

In theory, the new tests will prevent such problems.

The state language test consists of four parts: reading, writing, listening and speaking. There is no time limit for completing the test, but most students finish the reading and writing parts in about two hours and the oral section in 30 minutes.

The test doubles the amount of time some districts have to spend assessing the skills of new students who lack English fluency, school officials said. The students already are tested on a range of other academic skills.

“Some of our new students were spending five hours at our assessment center,” said Debbie Youngblood, a Garden Grove schools administrator in charge of programs for English learners. “It used to take half of that.”

Garden Grove officials decided to transfer the written and reading part to the classroom to cut the time new students spend at the registration center.

Antonio Sauza, an 8-year-old who recently immigrated from Mexico, was being tested at the Garden Grove district Friday.

When asked by a reporter how the oral portion went, he responded in Spanish that “it was easy.” Sauza could describe in Spanish the story he heard in English about “house pets having a party.”

But his spoken English was so poor that he could not tell the tester about the story. That told the district all it wanted to know about his English skills. Even so, after he is placed in his third-grade class, he will have to be pulled out to complete the writing and reading sections.

“That is unnecessary,” said Jay Heck, supervisor of the district’s assessment center. “If they do poorly in listening and speaking, why do we have to pull them out of class and give them reading and writing, something we already know they can’t do?”

Before the new testing program, Garden Grove examined incoming students for their speaking and listening abilities when they entered the district and before reclassifying them as fluent in English. The state now mandates the full test every year for all English learners.

State officials said the exam will eliminate the need to test students when they transfer from district to district because everyone will be using the same standards.

But what’s more important, they said, is that universal standards will ensure that everyone is following the rules for measuring student progress.

Most districts, even those complaining about the test, agree that it can be useful.

“Finally we have something that will tell us if these kids are progressing or not progressing,” said Cliff Rodrigues, coordinator of bilingual education for the Ventura County Superintendent of Schools Office. “As much as everyone’s frustrated, we have to look beyond that. This is a good thing.”

Nearly a quarter of California students are not fluent in English. In the Los Angeles district, 42% fall into that category; the figure is as high as 80% at some schools.

Wong estimated that it cost the Los Angeles district $20 to $30 to test each student. The state reimburses $1.50 per student, another sore spot with local schools.

“We used to spend $100,000 [a year] for language assessment,” said Toni Oklan-Arko, director of bilingual/English language development services in the West Contra Costa Unified School District in the Bay Area, which tested 9,685 students. That cost has more than doubled with the new tests, she said. “Those are funds that could have gone to supplemental services, additional materials and tutoring and staff development.”

This year, the districts were given from May 14 to Oct. 31 to complete all the tests. They have until Nov. 14 to ship the tests to the state so they can be scored.

But tests that were shipped earlier in the year have not yet been scored, schools complain. The districts need the data to put students in appropriate classes and to qualify for certain federal and state funds.

The state said it expects to get the data to schools by early 2002.

Some schools have decided--with the state’s blessing--to score their own students so they can place them in the right classes as soon as possible.

In Ventura County, high school Spanish teacher Tim Murray developed computer software that can help calculate the scores of 500 tests at a time.

Rodrigues said Murray, of Channel Islands High School in Oxnard, turned entrepreneur, selling his program for $300 per disk to nearly every school district in Ventura County. Now others from around the region are calling him.

“Word is getting around,” said Rodrigues, with the Ventura County Department of Education. “You can’t have kids sitting around for six to eight weeks. You’ve got to get them in a program, and this is an easy way to do it.”

Times staff writer Jenifer Ragland contributed to this report.