State Tests Get Passing Grade in TV Exam

A year ago, teacher Lori Musick would have told you that California’s standardized testing program was fundamentally wrong, a scourge on children and teachers.

Today, Musick’s documentary “Put to the Test: Are California’s Schools Making the Grade?” will air on KOCE, Orange County’s public broadcasting affiliate, and suggest that the Stanford 9 test and the high school exit exam may not be so bad after all.

Musick, who is out of the classroom on special assignment to KOCE to advise teachers across the county on technology, sounds somewhat surprised at the transformation in her own thinking.

But it’s a transformation she hopes will benefit the public’s understanding of education issues. Her 27-minute documentary, which airs the same day that the results of the first high school exit exam are released, seeks to explain what state officials were thinking when they created the Academic Performance Index and the high school exit exam.

Musick said she has become convinced that a statewide testing program can improve the quality of teaching in California. Without the tests, administrators and teachers may not know what help students need or how to help them.

But that isn’t to say that Musick has become a cheerleader for the new system.

“There’s so many things wrong with it. . . . I hope teachers see that [the testing program] is a work in progress,” said Musick, a science teacher in the Saddleback Valley Unified School District. The state “has made mistakes, and they’re trying as hard as they can to improve.”

California schools began administering the Stanford 9 achievement tests five years ago. The Academic Performance Index, created two years ago, ranks every school in the state based on how well students do on the Stanford 9 and related English and math exams. Starting in 2004, all students must pass the high school exit exam in order to graduate.

These two tests have fundamentally transformed education in California in the last five years. Some teachers love them; others say the new regime has destroyed their creativity and turned them into test-preparation robots.

“I see and hear so much misunderstanding about testing and education across the state,” said Musick. “If, as teachers, we’re thinking ‘Oh, my God, how can I make sense of this,’ then what are parents thinking?”

Though educators agreed it was an important topic, not many wanted to join the discussion.

District after district in Orange County turned down requests to interview teachers and tape in classrooms. The topic is just too controversial, Musick said.

Finally Musick was able to persuade a few administrators she knows from two decades of teaching in Orange County to let her in.

What resulted is a video that intersperses classroom scenes of teachers, parents and students talking about the tests and extended interviews with Richard Brown, a UC Irvine professor and testing expert, and Marian Bergeson, California’s Secretary of Education when then-Gov. Pete Wilson signed the legislation that put the Stanford 9 in place.

That way, the viewer can see both how teachers and parents experience the tests, and also what testing experts and state officials intended them to be.

An interactive Web site, https://www.puttothetest.org, has been created where parents and teachers can e-mail questions and comments directly to Bergeson and Brown.