THE MONEY IN TESTING

 

By David Bacon

         LOS ANGELES, CA (3/21/00) - This has been the year that California

schools went test-crazy.

         In every district, students have taken the new state-mandated STAR

(Standardized Testing and Reporting) test by the thousands.  Based on their

scores, every school in the state has been rated and placed on a scale from

the lowest to the highest.  Dozens of LA district schools found themselves

at the bottom of the list.

         And this year Governor Davis' latest pet education reform, the high

school exit exam, will be implemented for many students, guinea pigs who

will test its implementation for all California students in years to come.

         This all may appear to be the result of Pete Wilson's, and then

Grey Davis' belief that a highly-publicized commitment to the latest fad in

education reform is the key to the hearts of California voters.  But if

that's the case, they're just two among a horde of politicians around the

country who've arrived at the same conclusion.

         By the turn of the millennium in January, every state in the U.S.

but one had adopted standards for what public school students were expected

to learn in at least one subject.  Forty-one of those states had gone on to

adopt tests to measure student performance, presumably on the yardstick

those standards provided.

         Such a widespread and rapid change has rarely swept through the

nation's schools.  And it hasn't done so without resistance.  Parents in

many states have protested the extensive use of standardized tests,

especially since so many decisions involving students' lives are now

determined by test performance.  Graduation from one grade to another, and

from high school itself, is now often test-determined.  The ranking of

schools, the resources available to them, and even the ability of parents

and teachers to control the local curriculum, is increasingly determined by

test scores.

         Meanwhile, politicians vie with each other to appear more concerned

about education, and position themselves as  would-be "education

governors," and now, in this year's national election, "education

president."

         Driving this almost obsessive interest in testing are factors

ranging from political ambition to genuine frustration by parents and

teachers with the ability of the public school system to teach its

students.  But testing is getting a big push from another important source,

which gets much less media coverage - the testing companies themselves.

         Districts and states are spending huge sums on testing and

standards.  That money is going to a few large companies, who are also the

publishers of the texts that schools use for instruction.  Dominating the

field are three big publishers. McGraw-Hill and its subsidiary, CTBS,

publishes the Terranova test series.  Harcourt Inc.'s Education Group

publishes the Stanford-9 test, and Houghton-Mifflin's Riverside division

publishes the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the Metropolitan Achievement

Test.

         Together, the big three and a handful of smaller companies, divide

a testing market that was estimated at $218.7 million for 1999 by the

Association of American Publishers.  The publication of standardized tests

is considered part of the market for instructional materials, which, at

$3.4 billion, is over 15 times as large.  But the market for tests has been

growing at an average of 7% a year for over a decade -- much faster than

the market for textbooks, whose annual growth rate was 3% over the last

four years, according to the executive director of the association's school

division, Steven Dreifler.  That growth rate alone makes it an attractive

market for publishers, and one which promises to become much larger and

more important in relation to their traditional business of publishing

books.

         Publishers are very secretive about the money they make on testing,

and hide it within the income figures they report for educational

publishing generally.  But Houghton-Mifflin's Riverside testing operation,

which sells the Iowa test, grew at a phenomenal 17% last year, while its

overall textbook division grew at 9.2%.  In 1997, McGraw-Hill's testing

division had gross income of $95 million, and its overall educational

publishing group grew 5.7% to $832 million.

         The rising profits of test publishers have had a profound effect on

the process in which the tests themselves are developed and adopted.

         In November, 1997, the California Board of Education overruled

both state Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin, and the

superintendents of numerous districts, and adopted the Stanford-9 test to

administer to 4 million of the state's students annually.  State educators

had spend years developing a set of standards for core curriculum, and

their intention was to move on to develop tests which would reflect what

was actually being taught.

         Governor Pete Wilson, and the state school board which he

dominated, cut the process short.  To force the legislature to immediately

adopt an off-the-shelf test, he withheld $200 million in school spending

until lawmakers agreed.  "We think it's a big waste of time, energy and

money," said Lloyd Porter at the time, a Yorba Linda teacher monitoring

board actions for the California Teachers Association.

         Wilson insisted on adopting the Harcourt test specifically, and

school districts around California were forced to sign contracts with the

company, worth $12 million a year, for a guaranteed period of 5 years.  The

state even insisted that all children take the test in English, including

those who spoke only Spanish.  Obviously, the test didn't assess the real

knowledge and skills of those children.  But the kids fulfilled a more

important function.  They consumed the product.

         The year following adoption, Harcourt's revenues from its Education

Group division shot up $85 million (18%), and its profits jumped $34

million (58%).

         It wasn't all roses.  Harcourt was later penalized $1.1 million in

August, 1999, for late reporting of test results, and for 100,000 mistaken

reports of results which were sent to parents, and had to be recalled.

         Testing and scoring errors are not that uncommon.  Last year 8000

New York City children were mistakenly sent to summer school when

McGraw-Hill printed their math scores on their reading test forms.

         Harcourt added to its remarkable revenue increases in recent years

by participating in one of the most highly-touted examples of this new

test-driven trend in education - what Republican Governor, now presidential

candidate, George Bush Jr. claims as Texas' "education miracle."  Beginning

as early as 1985, the company's subsidiary, Harcourt Brace Educational

Measurement, was involved in developing the now-famous Texas Academic

Assessment Skills test.

         Although the state currently contracts for test development with

National Computer Systems, that company subcontracts the work to Harcourt.

National Computer gets about $20 million a year for TAAS development;

Harcourt's cut is not public.  In addition Harcourt gets about $2.8 million

a year for developing TAAS study guides.

         Being the test developer can be very advantageous.  The company's

textbooks were marketed to local districts around the state with a flier

stating  "Why choose Harcourt Brace for your math program? . . . (It is

the) only program to have tests written by the same company that helps to

write the TAAS tests and actually wrote the Parents' Study Guide for TAAS:

Harcourt Brace Educational Measurement."

         Stating the connection so baldly is considered bad form, and

Harcourt later said it would discontinue the promotion.  But the fact is

that, according to the Texas Education Agency, the company sold $25 million

of elementary school math textbooks in the state last year alone.

         Other contracts are similarly lucrative.  McGraw-Hill won a $30

million contract for tests in Kentucky this year.  In Mississippi, with one

of the lowest per-pupil spending levels in the country, the state is about

to sign a 10-year testing contract with McGraw-Hill for a total of $29.4

million.  Despite releasing test scores late this year, Wisconsin not only

renewed its McGraw-Hill contract, but increased the annual payment from

$1.25 million to $1.5 million.

         A rebellion by Wisconsin parents, however, finally forced the

legislature to kill a proposed $10.1 million test high school students

would have had to pass to graduate.  In California, on the other hand, the

state's new Democratic governor, Grey Davis, last year rammed a similar

test through the state legislature, along with another measure ranking the

state's schools based on test results.

         Despite the money spent, uncertainty is rampant over what the test

scores actually mean.  Sandra Stotsky, a researcher at Harvard, says that

the TAAS test, for instance, doesn't measure what politicians say it does,

when they argue that rising scores in the state mean that children are

learning more.  "There may have been no real improvement in reading skills.

There may even have been a decline," she notes, alleging that the test is

made easier so more students pass.

         Texas has been consumed by testing fever, in which districts and

schools organize TAAS camps, hold TAAS Olympics, and bend the curriculum

towards test-taking, in a high-stakes environment in which the penalties

for low performance can be brutal.  Texas has no collective bargaining for

teachers, and promotion can depend on student scores.  Urban Texas counties

have even indicted a school board, fired teachers and a principal, and

launched investigations over allegations of test tampering.

         Underlying the hysteria are even more basic questions about whether

standardized tests reflect a bias which favors white children over racial

minorities, English-speakers over immigrants, and students from families

with higher income over those with lower incomes.

         These tests are not recent inventions.  The Stanford-9 and Iowa

tests go back over 60 years, and were originally developed in universities.

Stanford psychologist Louis Terman, who wrote the first test in the

Stanford series before World War One, was notorious for regarding racial

minorities and Jews as "feeble-minded."  Other early test developers were

held similar racist views, and saw the tests as instruments to weed out the

less intelligent.

         Allegations of racial bias continue to dog the tests today, despite

publishers' claims of an unprecedented level of objectivity.  Two Harcourt

tests, the Otis-Lennon and Metropolitan Achievement, were recently charged

with being Eurocentric and discriminatory to New Orleans's African-American

students, when they were used as a basis for admission to a local high

school.  For admission during the 1997-98 school year, 763 students took

both tests, of whom 44 percent were black and 42 percent were white. Of

those, 347 passed both tests. Among those who passed, 27 percent were black

and 59 percent were white.

         New Orleans was sued, a common experience - most states are sued

over bias or problems with mistaken test results.  The Mexican American

Legal Defense and Education Fund, for instance, mounted a major legal

challenge to the TAAS test, saying it has a discriminatory impact on Black

and Hispanic children.  According to Maureen DiMarco, formerly California's

Secretary of Education under Wilson, and now vice-president for education

and government at Houghton-Mifflin, "it's hard to have a test that doesn't

get sued."  But, she notes, it's the state or school district that has to

mount a defense and bear the legal costs, not the publisher.

         "Tests do measure social and economic conditions," she admits.

"Children from poor communities go to schools which don't have resources,

and use less effective methods of instruction.  Lots of test scores can be

explained by the lack of books.  Poor children also move more often.  The

implications of what's being measured are very deep.  Poor kids can learn

just as well as higher income kids.  They're just not getting the resources

they need to learn."

         Despite these questions, and growing opposition by parents and

teachers, the test market looks good to publishers.   Twenty states now

work with publishers to come up with state-specific tests, called

"criteria-referenced", rather than using off-the-shelf, "norm-referenced"

tests, according to the AAP's Dreifler.  Working to produce unique tests

for a state can produce consulting fees for the publisher helping to

develop the product, followed by sales of the test itself.  "The trendline

is that this type of testing will grow," he says.

         Dreifler says that the states don't normally involve publishers in

the writing of the standards themselves, but  DiMarco says the connection

is really tighter than that.  "It's a wise state that seeks the advice of a

publisher when formulating standards, to ensure they're rigorous, and not

too vague," she explains.  "Then they can issue a better request for bids."

The company that helps develop the standards, presumably, has a better

chance at getting the bid for the test, and has an advantage in selling

textbooks which meet the curriculum requirements as well.

         Are we heading for an era in which large companies increasingly tie

all these elements together?  Publishers already hold enormous economic

power, and strive for a close relationship with the state authorities who

choose instructional materials and tests.  With personnel moving back and

forth between the state and private sector, an education-industrial complex

is beginning to emerge.

         Backing the growth in testing is also what supporters refer to as

the standards and accountability movement.  But this is not just a

grassroots wave sweeping the country from below.  Pushing its agenda are

organizations like the Pew Charitable Trust, the Heritage Foundation, and

the Hudson Institute, and corporate CEOs like IBM's Lou Gerstner.

         "The standards and accountability movement is growing," DiMarco

says.  "Just look at how many education governors we have now.  Even

presidential candidates know they have to speak to these issues."

         "Publishers definitely see tests as an opportunity," Dreifler

concludes.

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david bacon - labornet email            david bacon

internet:       dbacon@igc.apc.org      1631 channing way

phone:          510.549.0291            berkeley, ca  94703