Proficiency Tests

Former San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Angela Alioto won't even say how many times she failed the California bar examination before she finally was licensed to practice law. "Consider it to be several," said the antidiscrimination lawyer and daughter of the late San Francisco mayor and famed antitrust lawyer, Joseph Alioto. "And understand," she quickly added, "that for the last two years in a row I have been nominated as a national trial lawyer of the year."

The controversy over racial bias, testing and firefighters that blew up at both the Supreme Court and the Senate last year returns Monday, this time as the justices decide whether blacks who were not hired in Chicago because of their test scores are due damages for years of lost wages. The potentially $100-million civil rights case comes before a high court that has already shown its skepticism toward such claims. Last year, the justices ruled for white firefighters in New Haven, Conn.

Like many honor students with dreams of going to an Ivy League university, Burton Liao has been taking a test preparation course to boost his scores on college entrance exams. But unlike his classmates in the summer program, Liao has plenty of time left to learn SAT vocabulary words and score-boosting strategies before the big test day arrives. He's only 13 years old.

The well-regarded Cleveland Humanities Magnet in Reseda is hardly a secret: On average, two students apply for every available spot. But even parent boosters don't precisely know how their magnet compares to others -- or to other schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. FOR THE RECORD: An article in Thursday's Section A about new data on L.A. magnet schools incorrectly referred to Hillcrest Drive Elementary as Hillside Elementary. That's because the district does not publicly release the test scores of magnet programs.

Francisco Menjivar has spent months memorizing answers to civics questions like, "Who wrote 'The Star-Spangled Banner?' " (Francis Scott Key) and "How many voting members are in the House of Representatives?" (435). He knows answers to most of the 96 questions and isn't about to put that hard work to waste.

SACRAMENTO -- California drivers could face more intensive vision, memory and reflex tests when they renew licenses if a Department of Motor Vehicles pilot project proves successful in better identifying those who are too impaired to be on the road.

I am absolutely livid about your article "New Standards Put Students to the Test," May 19, describing how a B student from Fillmore High School can't graduate because she failed the proficiency test twice. It is Fillmore High that has failed by giving this student grades that led her and her family to believe she was performing well. This child is being held accountable for the failure of the school, the administrators, the teachers and the Board of Education. Standards should be high, but the job of the school and educators is to help kids achieve high standards and give them every opportunity possible.

Faced with the threat of congressional intervention, federal health officials have agreed to delay for another year the implementation of a 17-year-old testing requirement for pathologists and technicians who read Pap smears. Although data from the first proficiency test given last year showed what health officials called alarming failure rates, pathologist organizations have challenged the adequacy of the test and asked Congress to impose a moratorium.

Depending on whom you ask, the recently released proficiency scores for the Castaic Union School District either show a continued pattern of mediocre academic performance or are being overblown for political leverage in Tuesday's school board election. In March, students in the first through seventh grades took the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, which measures performance in math, spelling, language, vocabulary, science, social studies and other topics.

A national physicians group is leading an effort in Congress to halt annual competency tests of doctors and laboratory technicians who read Pap smears, even as the results of the first such test indicate significant problems with the way the slides are interpreted. Legislation to place a moratorium of at least one year on the proficiency exams recently passed the House and is now before the Senate. It is supported by the College of American Pathologists, which accredits laboratories nationwide.

Los Angeles-area charter schools have won a $60-million grant to develop a teacher-evaluation system based at least partly on student test scores. The grant, part of $335 million in related awards announced Thursday by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, represents the largest private funding for an initiative of this sort. "Teachers matter more to student achievement, more than any other factor inside our school building," Melinda Gates said. "This is something we know absolutely for certain at this point."

Test proctor Chae Su-beom knows the drill. Twice on this all-important day, for a seemingly interminable half-hour at a time, he is required to stand completely still. No coughing, gum-chewing, breathing heavily or even making eye contact with his exam-taking students. Female minders face additional prohibitions: No excessive makeup or perfume that might give off a distracting scent. No high heels that could go clicketyclack on the linoleum floors. Today, across South Korea, 650,000 high school seniors will face the most crucial evaluation of their young lives: the national college entrance examination.

Thirty-nine Los Angeles schools -- a group larger than the entire Glendale school system -- identified as "failing" under federal standards became eligible Tuesday for takeover under a recent Board of Education policy. These schools bring the number of Los Angeles Unified School District campuses eligible for takeover to 252. Bidders from inside or outside the nation's second-largest school system could submit proposals to run such schools. The bidding process also applies to 51 new schools set to open over the next four years.

Nearly one in 10 students in the class of 2009 did not pass the state's high school exit exam, which is required to receive a diploma. The results, released Wednesday, were nearly stagnant compared with the previous year. By the end of their senior year, 90.6% of students in the graduating class had passed the two-part exam, compared with 90.4% in the class of 2008. "These gains are incremental, but they are in fact significant and they are a true testimony to the tremendous work being done by our professional educators . . . as well as our students," said state Supt.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa learned a major lesson in school reform Tuesday: It's hard to fix failing schools in Los Angeles, even those under his purview. That insight arrived with the release of the state's standardized test scores. They painted his reform efforts at 10 of the city's historically low-performing schools as an inconsistent work in progress. A similar story emerged at South Los Angeles' Locke High School, which just completed its first year under the management of a charter school operator.

California's top education official sought Tuesday to counter federal criticism of the state's reluctance to use student test scores to evaluate teachers, paying a visit to Long Beach to highlight one of the few California school districts to make extensive use of such data. The Long Beach Unified School District's use of student scores to assess the effectiveness of programs, instructional strategies and teachers is a rarity in California, and state Supt.

Dong Trang loves calculus because, well, "it's easy," he says. So are chemistry and biology. It's English that gives him fits. And because of that, Trang, who grew up speaking Vietnamese at home in Highland Park, has been on pins and needles as a freshman at the University of California campus here. He must pass the university's writing exam--soon--if he is going to continue as a sophomore in the fall. "You feel the pressure," Trang said.

The number of students graduating from Los Angeles public schools has declined for two straight years even as enrollment in the 12th grade has been rising sharply, new state data show. The graduation slump began when California started requiring students to pass an exit exam before they could receive a diploma. The data caught educators by surprise after they were quietly posted on the state Department of Education website.

Citing the dire economic condition of many schools and states, the College Board will delay launching an eighth-grade assessment test designed to gauge students' readiness for college. The test had been scheduled to premiere this fall, but school districts and states, facing cutbacks, were unable to afford it, a spokeswoman said.

California's high school exit exam is keeping disproportionate numbers of girls and non-whites from graduating, even when they are just as capable as white boys, according to a study released Tuesday. It also found that the exam, which became a graduation requirement in 2007, has "had no positive effect on student achievement."