A justly heralded education reform enacted by the Legislature last year provides for statewide testing of students at nearly every grade level in several core subjects.

Well-designed tests can be a diagnostic tool, measuring each individual student’s achievement, indicating areas in which the pupil needs work and offering yardsticks by which to compare schools with each other and rate California’s overall performance with that of other states.

Gov. Pete Wilson has drawn some criticism, however, for insisting that the statewide tests beadministered in English only.

This would not preclude a district from administering its own standardized tests, perhaps in more than one language _ as some districts now do. But the statewide mandatory examinations, with their aim of comparing performance of schools and students up and down the state, would be published in English under the Wilson plan.

On this issue, the governor has good sense on his side. It is true that there are large numbers of students in California who lack a command of English. But is that an argument for shielding them from assessments of their progress in the language? Quite the contrary: Conducting the statewide standardized tests in English is perhaps the best means of gauging how well the schools are serving these students, how quickly they are learning the primary language of culture and commerce.

One of the grave weaknesses up to now in California’s programs for bilingual instruction has been the lack of reliable measurements. The one indicator that offers clues to effectiveness is discouraging: Only about 5 percent of students in bilingual instruction transition out of these programs in any one year, an alarmingly low rate of language mastery. However, the reliability of this measurement is open to question: It is conceivable that many students who have been retained in bilingual classrooms actually are competent in English _ while, on the other hand, some of those who have been transitioned might not in fact have gained a firm grasp of the language.

Testing in English would move assessments beyond those uncertainties, and provide a clear indication of which students can function in the language and which can’t. Accountability for teachers and administrators would thus be strengthened _ those who aren’t getting results would find their deficiencies highlighted.

And students who need help would be more readily identified.

Different approaches to imparting English proficiency could also be compared more easily. Test scores would offer a marker as to what works.

The argument that tests should be administered in different languages points toward a potentially chaotic result, if followed to its logical conclusion. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, for instance, well over 100languages are represented.

Must the state accommodate people speaking all those different tongues with separately prepared tests? The cost and administrative burden boggles the mind.

One other point of controversy has arisen concerning language and the statewide tests. A bipartisan group of lawmakers working on details of the testing method concluded that the scores of students with English proficiency should be separated from those without it for the purpose of comparing California’s overall test results with those of other states. The idea is that the state’s national ranking can be unfairly distorted downward when the scores of newcomers who can’t speak the language are thrown into the mix.

Their inability to use English is not a reflection on the state’s schools, the logic goes; so, it isn’t analytically helpful to compare their scores with those of students from other states who are born and raised in America.

This argument makes sense only to the degree the students whose scores are separated out are newly arrived. Students who have been in California schools for a year or two _ and who still lack a command of English _ are a legitimate, albeit negative, reflection on the California schools system, and their scores should be included with those of English-proficient students in comparing California’s test scores with the other 49 states. If California’s students aren’t learning English, its national ranking should reflect that sorry fact.



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