Censorship Fight Over School Tests Escalates : Education: State sends out material in tamper-proof plastic, but critics hope to find out contents and prepare to sue to halt exams. Legislative debate is heating up.

Top-secret documents sealed in tamper-proof plastic are arriving on the doorsteps of California’s public schools. Inside are the latest versions of the state performance test to be taken by about 1 million children by mid-June.

That kind of tight security is usually just precautionary, but not anymore. Authorities are determined to avoid what happened last fall when one section of the test--a story by Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker--was reproduced in a Riverside newspaper, prompting educators to remove the excerpt from the exam and sparking a major battle over censorship.

Attempting to defuse the controversy, the state Board of Education last month reinstated the story and two others to the pool of literature that officials draw upon to assemble the California Learning Assessment System tests.

But that move failed to end what promises to be a long-running ideological battle on the suitability of the materials used to judge how well California students perform.

Critics of the closely guarded test have distributed more excerpts from the 1993 edition and are eager to get their hands on the 1994 version and make that public too, thus impairing its usefulness as test material.

Opponents maintain that the innovative exam--a new approach intended to measure critical thinking skills of students against tough statewide standards--fails to test what public school students learn. Among the objections are that open-ended questions seek to elicit feelings, not knowledge, from the students.

As part of their strategy, conservative opponents are poised to sue school districts from the Coachella Valley to Santa Barbara to block the administration of the test this spring. They contend that state law requires that parents give permission before children take the exams.

Test supporters characterize the criticism as the rantings of right-wing zealots, and say the objections are tinged with racism and sexism because many of the targeted writing samples are by African Americans and women.

As the first test date approaches and criticism mounts, the state Department of Education is warning school superintendents that they must administer the test to all students. The authorities are also cautioning teachers that any attempt to divulge test contents could cost them their teaching credentials.

To deter tampering with the test process, legislators plan to introduce legislation to impose criminal sanctions and stiff fines for release of the confidential material.

But Susie Lange, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Education, conceded that all it would take to destroy the integrity of the test is “one teacher going to a Xerox machine.”

The test was administered for the first time in 1993 to fourth-, eighth- and 10th-grade students in public schools, and the student scores, largely dismal, were made public last month. The test sections included mathematics, reading and writing.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the first groups of an estimated 140,000 students, now including fifth-graders, are scheduled to begin taking the performance test Monday.

Even as students sharpen their pencils to start the test, the debate is heating up in the Legislature. Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara) is among those pushing legislation set to be heard this week to authorize administration of the test in future years, while angry Republican legislators are demanding a reappraisal. Assembly Republican Leader Jim Brulte (R-Rancho Cucamonga) is expected this week to ask to see copies of the current testing materials--a request that already has been denied by the Department of Education.

Republican legislators say their complaints go beyond criticism of individual passages by Walker and other authors.

During a recent Assembly Education Committee hearing, one of the critics, Assemblyman Larry Bowler (R-Elk Grove), said there is a suspicion that the test is laden with value judgments and the “attempt to manipulate and intimidate young minds. . . .”

Assemblywoman Delaine Eastin (D-Fremont), chairwoman of the committee, strongly disagreed, saying the test does not “get into issues of morality at all. The truth is that these people (test critics) are afraid of children being able to think.”

Eastin, a candidate for state superintendent of public instruction, denounced Republican Assembly critics as “extremists arming for Armageddon. . . . These people probably don’t want us to have public education.”

Among the groups passing around parts of the 1993 test in the Capitol are the Escondido-based United States Justice Foundation and the Eagle Forum of California, part of a nationwide conservative women’s group headed by Phyllis Schlafly.

Carolyn Steinke of La Quinta, an Eagle Forum director in the Coachella Valley, said it is possible that if she obtains a copy of the 1994 test, she would expose objectionable portions.

“There are some things you can’t hide,” she said.

In Steinke’s view, the literature sections of the test deal “in a lot of hopelessness” and she faults the exam for failing to measure such basic skills as spelling and legible writing--a charge denied by those who created the test.

According to the statewide standards used to score the tests, student writing performance is judged by the succinctness, depth and originality of the writing as well as by the grammar used.

The next step for opponents is to ask the courts to block the test. Steinke and Gary Kreep, executive director of the private, nonprofit Justice Foundation, will argue that the test explores the beliefs of students--in violation of a state law that requires parental consent before children answer such personal questions.

Lange of the state Department of Education said in an interview that if a question was viewed as “too intrusive of a person’s personal life,” educators modified it willingly, not because of attacks by conservative activists.

She said widespread disclosure undermines the integrity of the assessment system, which when fully in place will cost about $55 million a year to administer. Currently, Lange said, there are no penalties for exposing the contents of the test.

That became clear recently as opponents openly distributed copies before and during the Assembly Education Committee hearing. Leafing through the packet passed out by critics, Dale Carlson, who has overseen development of the test for the Department of Education, shook his head and described the material as “the real McCoy.”

Among the passages that critics called attention to were a story from “Black Boy” by Richard Wright and “Not Poor Just Broke” by Dick Gregory. Lange confirmed that the Wright story was used on the language arts portion of last year’s test. She would not say whether Gregory’s was on the test.

In the exam, students are asked to read a passage and evaluate its meaning or describe their feelings about what they read. The response is scored for the students’ ability to understand the text, question and revise their interpretations and connect ideas in the passage to their own lives.

The Rev. Phil Lawson, representing the California Council of Churches, said he was concerned about censorship and what he called “the internalized racism and sexism” because critics of the test cite stories by Walker, other African Americans and women authors.

Test opponents brushed aside the race of the authors as unimportant.

The controversy has simmered since last fall when the Riverside Press-Enterprise published an excerpt from Walker’s “Roselily” along with accompanying questions that appeared on the 1993 test. The story is about the thoughts of a black unmarried mother as she stands at the altar for her wedding to a Muslim man.

State education officials said they had no choice but to delete it from the test because the confidentiality of the exam had been breached. About the same time, the Traditional Values Coalition questioned the story because it “could easily be construed as anti-religious and anti-clergy.”

In December, the state Board of Education removed another Walker story, “Am I Blue?,” from the 1994 test. The story relates the loneliness of a horse named Blue and ends with the narrator unable to eat a steak: “I am eating misery, I thought, as I took the first bite and spit it out.” Board President Marion McDowell described the story as “anti meat-eating.”

Likewise, an excerpt from Annie Dillard’s “American Childhood” about her growing up was pulled from the test. Board member Kathryn Dronenburg said the story by the Pulitzer Prize winner was removed because of violence in the depiction of a snowball fight.

Besieged with complaints about censorship, the board last month ordered the writings restored to the pool of literature used to test reading comprehension and analytical skills. Whether they will actually form part of the test materials presented to students this spring is unknown.