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This chapter examines the administration of Louis “Bill” Honig, who was on California's State Board of Education in the 1970s. Before Honig's administration, the California Department of Education (CDE) had been focusing on programs in early childhood, school finance, and school improvement, curriculum was practically off the map, and the state issued “frameworks” that were intended to describe the goal of K–12 curriculum in all subject matters. Honig and his colleagues, on the other hand, wanted to change testing, curriculum, teacher education, school organization, and parent and community involvement across all grade levels and all subjects. This chapter then examines the teaching system in place in California during late 1970s, and what changes and adjustments were attempted at the time.

This chapter explores the disintegration of California's mathematics education reform. In 1992, California already had many pieces of the reform puzzle in place: a framework and aligned assessment system, a theory of professional development, and innovative curricula. One factor that contributed to its demise was the rising tensions between Bill Honig and the State Board—where insiders spoke of “power struggles.” In 1991 and 1992, then, the State Board sued Honig due to his unwillingness to implement some of their policies. This, in turn, would lead to the board acquiring more power. The chapter also look at the demise of CLAS mathematics and language arts performance assessments. These CLAS tests contained multiple choice and open-ended qusetions, questions that were harder to mark which needed “matrix sampling.” This resulted in a lot of questions and suspicions that eventually led to the reform's downfall. This, along with other attempts at reform, were thwarted.

This chapter further explores the efforts made by Bill Honig and his staff up to 1990—their goals to change testing, teacher preparation, and available curricular materials. During this time, there was a growing concern about a rigorous, well-aligned assessment system wherein the focus might turn to testing methods. This was a problem in that such a focus on testing also shapes curricular content and pedagogy. Teachers and schools tend to mimic how the content is tested. Thus, under pressure to improve test scores and prepare students, schools might provide exercises that look just like the tests. Tests were thus very important in making reforms, especially because they were one of the factors that needed to be aligned with the 1985 Framework. This chapter looks at the means through which educators searched for new curricular materials. These educators were Walter Denham, Joan Akers, and others—CDE staff members that were frustrated with their experiences with textbook companies.