The Los Angeles teachers union and the city's school district are battling over a district practice that, a Times' analysis suggests, contributes to higher scores on state tests.
The practice is "periodic assessments," a bureaucratic name for exams administered by the Los Angeles Unified School District. The goal is to give teachers insight into what students need to learn while there remains time in the current school year to adjust instruction.The union Tuesday directed teachers to refuse to give them to students on the grounds that the tests are costly and counterproductive.
FOR THE RECORD
LAUSD testing: An article in the Jan. 28 California section about a teachers union call for a boycott of district-mandated testing overstated the correlation between improvements in test scores and increased use of periodic assessments. The article said the association was strong last year in 10th-grade English and moderate in Algebra I for high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The article should have said that, based on the Times analysis, the association was moderate in English and weak in algebra. The district's own subsequent research shows what L.A. Unified regards as a strong association between the assessments and higher test scores.
But there could be a downside.
The local exams, given three or four times a year at secondary schools, appear to be boosting state scores in 10th-grade English and Algebra 1 -- the two subjects examined by The Times -- and therefore perhaps other subjects as well.
The district tests, which have gradually permeated most core academic subjects and most grade levels, have become central to a debate over the proliferation of testing, whether it interrupts instruction and can narrow the depth and breadth of what's taught. The philosophical dispute sharpened this week amid protracted, stalled negotiations over a teachers contract and the need to slash millions to address an ongoing budget crisis.
Axing these district assessments would spare jobs by saving millions of dollars -- and would improve instruction at the same time, said A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles.
The union's call for a boycott of the tests has emerged as an early trial for new Supt. Ramon C. Cortines, who took over Jan. 1.
Cortines asserted that the assessments are part of teachers' assigned duties -- they are not optional. He also said he has and will amend aspects of the tests that need fixing. But he won't toss them out because, he said, they have contributed strongly to rising performance on the state's own annual tests.
He may be right, based on a Times' analysis of last year's improved state test scores in 10th-grade English and Algebra 1.
The Times found that greater participation in the district assessments was associated with better scores. In 10th-grade English, the correlation was fairly strong, accounting for nearly half the improvement. The link was more moderate in Algebra 1, explaining about one-third of the gains for high school students in that subject.
