CLAS Tests

Re “Don’t Let CLAS Die in a Political Deadlock,� Commentary, Aug. 26:

Contrary to what the UC Berkeley think tank directors say, CLAS deserves to die. Among other things, students should be judged by their ability to understand and recall facts rather than on their ability to make personal connections. When I ride in an airplane, I care if the assembler understood the designer’s directions, not whether or not he remembered a time his grandfather built a treehouse.

As an English teacher, I know students who understand the CLAS literature selection quite well, but write responses that only rephrase or are considered simplistic. Their scores would falsely indicate an inability to read adequately. Conversely, as some of my gifted students have told me, students need only get the main idea, and write in florid phrases in order to score well, though they had very little idea of what the complete piece said. This is hardly a test of reading ability; it is an IQ test.

On these conclusions our students are being misjudged. CLAS is a multimillion-dollar boondoggle.

ARLENE MANEMANN, Tustin