Meanwhile, the president of Harcourt Educational Measurement, Joanne Lenke, resigned last week, effective Aug. 9. A spokesman for Harcourt Inc., the testing division's parent company, said the move was unrelated to California's testing program. He added that Ms. Lenke would remain a consultant to the company. The test is offered only in English. Proposition 227 supporters said they viewed the results as a victory for the new law, which calls for teaching LEP students almost exclusively in English.
Students are then to move into mainstream classes.
Mr. Unz released an analysis of test data that showed LEP students in grades 2-6 posted gains more than double those for all California students in the same grades. But several testing experts said the analysis was flawed and invalid. Kenji Hakuta, a Stanford University education professor and language expert, said his own analysis showed that LEP students made gains in districts that have maintained bilingual programs, in districts that never had bilingual programs, and in districts that have moved to English immersion in light of Proposition 227. Some school officials and others argue that it's inappropriate to test students in a language they are still learning. And they point out that while nearly a quarter of California's students are LEP, such students make up less than 2 percent of the national norming sample used in the Stanford-9 test.