NEW YORK TIMES

July 7, 1999

Glitch Over Language Proficiency Mars Test Results in California

By ANDREA ADELSON

SANTA ANA, Calif. -- California students made modest gains in every subject and nearly every grade in a test of basic skills this spring, according to results reported last week. But what seemed like a big victory for opponents of bilingual education evaporated when a reporting error was found to have inflated the scores of non-English-speaking students.

The error, discovered the day before the scores were to be posted on the Internet, made it look as if students with limited English had made sharp gains in the first school year since the state's voters banned bilingual education.

But last Wednesday, embarrassed officials from the state and the test's publisher, Harcourt Educational Measurement, announced that they had mistakenly pooled scores for students not fluent in English with those for students whose English had been limited but now was fluent.

As a result, only statewide results, not those for individual districts or for students with limited English, have now been posted on the California Education Department's Web site.

Education officials still expect the revised scores, to be made public on July 15, will show some improvement by non-native speakers.

Ron Unz, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur who was the author of Proposition 227, which banned bilingual education, said, "Even a significant improvement statewide would be a powerful statement."

As a whole, California scores on the achievement tests were just below the national average. The biggest gains came in math and spelling by early elementary school pupils, the first beneficiaries of smaller class sizes in kindergarten through the third grade, a popular initiative that was begun three years ago.

"In K through 3 we're seeing results," said Delaine Eastin, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. But she added that achieving similar gains across all grade levels would require substantial new spending.

Besides the glitch over language proficiency, the test itself remains controversial, particularly over questions meant to reflect California's newly adopted academic standards, some of the most rigorous in the nation.

Last week the California Federation of Teachers asked for a one-year hiatus on testing until the new curriculum is taught statewide. Most districts are only now adding the revised instruction to their curriculum.