Califonria Teachers Union Fails Students

SACRAMENTO, CA~Talk to principals at elementary schools with high-achieving, low-income students and one of their clear messages is the importance of testing to diagnose students’ academic weaknesses and to guide interventions. Yet the legislature has decided to undermine the state’s assessment program by eliminating the crucial testing of second-grade students.

Under the current testing program, the California Standards Test (CST) is administered to students in grades two through 11. This test measures student achievement in reading, math and several other subjects and is aligned with the state’s tough academic content standards. Recently, two budget subcommittees in the legislature voted to eliminate funding for second-grade testing.

Opponents claim to be acting in the interests of students. California Teachers Association (CTA) president Barbara Kerr says that her powerful union opposes second-grade testing so that “teachers have the time to help our youngest students achieve the knowledge and skills required to meet the state’s rigorous academic content standards — instead of wasting time preparing children for age-inappropriate tests.” Yet, the effective practices of high-performing schools and the bulk of empirical research show that testing young students is exactly what ensures their acquisition of standards-based knowledge and skills.

At high-performing Sixth Street Prep charter elementary school in Southern California, which has a mostly poor Hispanic student population, principal Linda Mikels says: “We begin by taking a look [at the state test scores] and seeing where the deficiencies are in the kids. We design instruction [around the scores], deciding how we might do interventions, afterschool programs, and other things to address those who have gaps. That’s where we start, we do our school plan from that, all the programs that we adopt are based on something we saw in the data.” Eliminating the testing of second-grade students would impair this effective use of assessment data.

The state tests are administered in the latter part of the academic year and test results come out in the summer. If second-grade testing is axed, third-grade test results would not be available until the start of grade four, meaning that deficiencies in core subjects may not be spotted until halfway through a student’s elementary-school career. Research indicates that by that time it may be too late to rectify these deficiencies.

A recent briefing paper published by California Business for Education Excellence highlights the evidence favoring early testing of students. For example, a study of the effectiveness of reading intervention efforts found that the interventions were more successful with younger elementary school students than with older ones. The study concluded: “The obvious implication is that prevention works better than later intervention. The sooner we intervene, the better. Early intervention is more effective and requires less intensiveness than later intervention. Early reading data allows us to identify students who have reading needs.” [Italics added] Second-grade testing provides this essential early data, and eliminating it would be a crime against children, especially low-income and minority students who often need these interventions most.

Finally, the CTA has it all wrong in claiming that dropping second-grade testing would improve standards-based teaching. Since the second-grade test is aligned with the state standards, it serves to motivate teachers, many of whom dislike the tough standards, to employ them in the classroom. Then-Los Angeles school superintendent Roy Romer correctly observed, “We gain from testing second-graders” because it allows school officials “to know whether instruction is occurring and how to improve it.” The likely real reason the CTA wants to eliminate second-grade testing is to shift the accountability spotlight away from its members rather than to improve the learning of students.

Governor Schwarzenegger says that one of his education priorities is to give parents good information about the education of their children. Test results are a critical source of such information since they reveal student deficiencies, allow the targeting of extra help, and improve teaching and learning. In his budget negotiations with legislative leaders, the governor must defend the true interests of our young children and ensure the continuation of second-grade testing.

Lance T. Izumi is Director of Education Studies at the Pacific Research Institute. He can be reached via email at lizumi@pacificresearch.org.