Students running the state testing
gantlet suffered an additional blow
this year, when science and social-
science sections were added to the
California Learning Assessment
System for grades five, eight and
10.[E/P]
The 1994 tests are still secret, of
course, but in 1993 the Department
of Education published ``Science:
New Directions in Assessment'' to
document what it smugly calls the
``evolution'' of its science testing
and allow teachers to prepare for
this year's test.[E/P]
If this is evolution, science
teaching in California is headed
straight back to the primordial
ooze. It's all gush and no thought,
with a heavy infusion of
politics.[E/P]
``Imagine that you too are an eighth
grade student,'' the booklet coos to
its presumably adult audience.
``Instead of the usual neat rows of
clean desks, you find tables set up
around the classroom with familiar
science materials on them.[E/P]
``You think something may be wrong.
This doesn't look like the usual
science test, this looks more like
science class. This might even be
fun!''[E/P]
Gag me with a spoon.[E/P]
In the 1990 statewide field tests,
sixth-grade guinea pigs completed
five 10-minute hands-on tasks,
supposedly requiring them to develop
a ``conceptual understanding of
natural phenomena.'' One task on
electricity and magnetism began with
the inane directions, ``You are a
scientist working for a large
computer company. Your assignment is
to investigate electricity.''[E/P]
Then the children are asked to build
a working electrical circuit from
the materials they are given, and
sketch it.[E/P]
Not a bad task, and I would hope
that they had already done it in
class. But it's mendacious to
suggest that it is something a
working scientist would be doing
``to investigate electricity.'' Even
sixth-graders aren't naive enough to
believe they are discovering
scientific principles unknown to
their teachers.[E/P]
The 1991 field tests stretch the
storyline motif to absurdity.
Eleventh graders working in teams of
three are to conduct a real-life
criminal investigation. A dead body
has been found (not among the
materials included in the test) and
they are to do a few tests and
decide who committed the crime.[E/P]
The right answer: insufficient
evidence. Scoring on CLAS tests is
done according to ``holistic
rubrics,'' which is educationese for
``snap judgments.'' Teachers hired
for the summer scoring sessions are
trained to assign a number from 0 to
6 to test papers. This is not
particularly subjective, if by that
critics mean that different scorers
will assign different numbers.
Teachers who can't match the group's
norms are first retrained, then
dismissed. But it's not subtle,
either. Once they move on to scoring
live tests, teachers spend only two
or three minutes per paper picking a
number.[E/P]
That's not an improvement on
multiple-choice testing. It's just a
lot more expensive. A million
students, taking five tests each,
adds up to a pleasant summer
windfall for thousands of teachers,
and in addition they get the inside
track in making their students look
good on the next years' test.[E/P]
But there's an interesting wrinkle.
If it's obvious that students
divided up the task, the scoring
instructions say, ``consider all
three answer sheets as one sheet.
Grade accordingly then assign each
individual test the same
score.''[E/P]
One reason CLAS is worth its multi-
million dollar tab, advocates claim,
is that it gives reliable and valid
scores for individual students. How
can that be true when no one will
even know whether a child's scores
are his own or someone else's?[E/P]
Consider also the possibilities for
gaming the system, if teachers
ensure that there's one good student
in each team who does all the work.
Students in science classes are
quite sophisticated about
maneuvering to get advantageous lab
partners, but do we want to make it
part of the curriculum?[E/P]
The final example is, quite
literally, trash. Fifth-graders are
given a bag full of assorted junk
calculated to induce the politically
correct answer to Question No. 1:
``When trash leaves your home, where
do you think it goes?''[E/P]
They'd have to be pretty dim not to
know that the preferred opinion on
the best way to get rid of aluminum
foil, newspapers, styrofoam, potato
and so forth is re-use and recycle.
They recite that in class now
instead of the pledge of allegiance.
But in case anyone hasn't figured it
out, the next page demands they
explain how each trashy bit can be
reused, or what it can be recycled
into.[E/P]
If the grown-ups really wanted to
make this exercise fun,, they should
have included a used disposable
diaper. Fifth-graders love toilet
jokes, and diapers are a real-life
problem.[E/P]
The second part of the test is
cooperative, and pairs of students
decide how to sort their trash into
two piles, one for non-living
objects, one for living/once-living
objects, destined for the compost
pile.[E/P]
How many urban youngsters have ever
nurtured a compost pile? Evidently
it never occurred to anyone that
this question might be culturally
biased. That's a big deal in the new
assessment movement, which is at its
root driven by the unpleasant
reality of racial disparities on all
standardized tests that are of any
use.[E/P]
But perhaps recycling is a higher
virtue than fairness.[E/P]
You would conclude that from the
capstone question in this brain-
washing exercise. It reads, ``The
landfills in our state are running
out of space! Write a short letter
to Governor Wilson telling him how
we can reduce the amount of trash we
send to our landfills and help
provide California with a healthy
environment.''[E/P]
This isn't science, it is
propaganda. Landfill capacity is in
no way a scientific problem, or even
an environmental problem. It's a
political problem, because nobody
minds landfills as long as they are
somewhere else. Enlisting children
to lobby on one side of a
contentious political issue, after
giving them only one side of the
scientific evidence, is absolutely
contrary to the purpose of a good
curriculum.[E/P]
Maybe the test actually given this
year will turn out to be less
embarrassing than the material the
department was field-testing. But
don't count on it. All of the tests
are supposed to be derived from the
state's 1990 ``Science Framework for
California Public Schools,'' and the
tone of smarmy self-congratulation
in the first issue of the
department's newsletter, ``The
Watershed,'' clearly implies these
people think they have actually done
something commendable.[E/P]
Better assessment will be just
another education fad unless it
becomes accountable, wrote Dale
Carlson, director of the California
Assessment Program. [E/P]
Would that it were so. Fads pass,
but invincible ignorance is
eternal.[E/P]