Stories Deleted From Tests to Be Reinstated

Besieged by charges of censorship, the State Board of Education on Friday ordered the writings of two Pulitzer Prize-winning authors restored to the pool of literature used in the testing of California schoolchildren.

The unanimous voice vote was aimed at defusing a controversy that pitted teachers and civil libertarians against Christian fundamentalists and some parents over stories by Alice Walker and Annie Dillard.

Board President Marion McDowell, who with another member had initially asked that the writings be removed, was asked by reporters if restoring the writings was an admission that the works should not have been removed in the first place.

“You’ll have to draw your own conclusions,” McDowell said. “We are saying they are appropriate.”

The Rev. Louis Sheldon of the Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition, who lobbied last year to remove a Walker excerpt from the test, vowed after the vote to continue the fight.

“We are going to make sure that kind of material is not going to be in a controlled test,” he said after the often-angry testimony of more than two dozen people.

Although the disputed works now return to the pool of test materials, it is not known if they will again be placed before California sophomores taking the English assessment tests. The briefly banned stories, “An American Childhood” by Dillard, and “Roselily” and “Am I Blue?” by Walker, are a small fraction of the many literary works that test officials will draw upon to write the statewide examination questions. The choices are not made public.

A spokesman for Gov. Pete Wilson, who has condemned censorship but stopped short of criticizing the board, had no comment on its action, a spokesman said. Most members are Wilson appointees.

The excerpts were contained in the English portion of the state’s pioneering new California Learning Assessment System tests, which emphasize measuring the performance of students in analytical and critical thinking. Critics maintain that the tests invade students’ privacy in asking questions about their religious beliefs and personal values.

The censorship controversy blossomed in recent weeks from two incidents that occurred last year.

In the first, the Riverside Press-Enterprise newspaper printed an excerpt in October from Walker’s “Roselily,” which expresses a jumble of thoughts of an unmarried mother at her wedding.

Department of Education officials struck the excerpt from this year’s tests based on protests of fundamentalist Christians and because the confidentiality of the test had been breached.

In the second incident, the state board adopted the 1994 tests, but struck the Dillard story and another by Walker on the advice of McDowell and member Kathryn Dronenberg.

Dronenberg complained that a Dillard excerpt about children throwing snowballs might be viewed as violent. McDowell said a piece by Walker, titled “Am I Blue?” could be interpreted as advocating a vegetarian lifestyle.

McDowell told reporters on Friday that the so-called “anti-meat-eating” excerpt was excised to protect the sensitivities of rural schoolchildren whose parents might raise poultry or livestock.

At the hearing, McDowell defended the board and the staff of the Department of Education. “It is truly unfortunate that some have chosen to characterize our actions (as) reflecting bias, racism, censorship or yielding to pressure. The characterization is simply not true,” McDowell said.

She said the board and department were motivated to select “fair and equitable” test items for “all segments of our student body.”

In a related development, Walker, a Northern California resident, for a second time refused to accept a special literary award from Wilson that declares her to be an official “state treasure.”

“A few weeks ago, I would have been honored,” Walker said in a statement released by her agent in New York. “However, I love California and respect its children too much to accept becoming a ‘state treasure’ in a state whose educators consider my work a menace to the 10th grade.”

A spokeswoman for Walker said it was unknown whether Walker was aware of the board’s decision Friday.