Parents Keep Children at Homein Protest Over New State Tests : Thousand Oaks: They say ‘psychological’ nature of questions on the CLAS exam violates students’ privacy.

About two dozen Thousand Oaks parents kept their children out of school Monday morning to prevent them from taking a new state assessment test that opponents claim violates students’ privacy.

Roughly 425 fourth-grade students at six schools in the Conejo Valley Unified School District were scheduled to begin this year’s round of the California Learning Assessment System exams Monday. Some of the schools took practice tests, while others began the actual exam.

Unlike other standardized assessment tests that rely on multiple-choice and true-false questions, CLAS emphasizes writing, asking students to explain how they arrived at particular solutions.

State education officials have hailed CLAS--used last year for the first time--as a revolutionary method for assessing how well children think rather than just measuring what they know.

But it is precisely the subjective nature of many of the questions on CLAS that bothers many conservatives in Thousand Oaks and around the state who oppose the test. Among them is former state Assembly candidate Alan Guggenheim.

“It’s a psychological test, not an academic test,” said Lori Fiore, president of the Parent-Faculty Assn. at Maple School in Thousand Oaks.

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As a result, at three of the schools, parents protested the tests by keeping their children home.

Protest organizers said they expect more parents to join the boycott of the CLAS exam as the rest of the district’s schools begin to administer this year’s version of the test later this week and through the end of the month.

And parents in at least two other school districts, Oak Park and Simi Valley, are organizing to keep their children out of school when the test is given in their communities.

In Thousand Oaks, activists against CLAS include school board member Mildred Lynch, who spoke at a protest meeting Friday.

State law requires school districts to give the CLAS exam and for students to take it.

Parents opposed to the test said their only recourse was to keep their children home while the test was being given--a potentially costly action for the district.

The district loses about $17 in state funds each day a student is absent. But it usually gets full funding if the student attends at least part of a school day.

Many CLAS opponents took their children to school after the testing was over Monday morning. And district officials said they believe that the extent of the protest is still relatively small.

“It’s significant and a concern,” Supt. Jerry Gross said. “But it’s not a dramatic problem.”

Launched statewide last spring, the CLAS exams are given to fourth-, eighth- and 10th-grade students in reading, writing and math. This year for the first time, a CLAS exam in science and social science will also be given to fifth-graders.

At Maple School, roughly 65 fourth-graders were scheduled to take the CLAS test Monday morning. But parents of 10 of the students kept their children home while the test was being given.

Aspen School officials reported that about five of the school’s 35 fourth-graders scheduled to take the test Monday were kept home by parents opposed to the exam.

And at Wildwood School, parents said at least seven fourth-grade students stayed home either the entire day or during the morning when the exam was given.

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At three other elementary schools where either actual or practice CLAS exams were given Monday--Ladera, Weathersfield and Westlake Hills--officials said no parents intentionally kept their children from taking the test.

Although many parents who kept their children home in the morning took the students to school in the afternoon, some parents said they planned to keep their children home all week while the test is being given to punish the district financially.

“If so few kids take the test, they will lose their funding,” said parent Mike Bell, who kept his daughter, a fourth-grader, home from Wildwood School on Monday. “That’s the goal.”

Some parents who sent their children to school for the exams Monday called school officials to complain about being harassed over the weekend with phone calls and flyers from protesters urging a boycott of the exam, Gross said. He added that some parents reported receiving anti-CLAS literature at church.

“We’ve had parents calling schools to complain about this group that’s harassing them to keep their kids home,” he said.

However, organizers said they were merely trying to alert parents about the content of the test.

“Parents who found out and were outraged by what kind of test it was felt that they should inform other parents,” said Suzanne Guggenheim, parent of a fourth-grader at Maple and an organizer of an anti-CLAS group called Concerned Parents and Educators. “Calling that harassment is very, very strong wording.”

Guggenheim and her husband, Alan, are conservative Republicans who are both running for the Ventura County Republican Central Committee. But she said they are keeping that campaign separate from the protest against CLAS.

One problem with the test, opponents say, is that it asks students to give their responses to stories, which critics say intrudes into the students’ personal lives.

On last year’s test, for example, 10th-graders read a short story by Alice Walker and then had to write and draw pictures giving their feelings, thoughts and opinions about the story.

“They’re forcing students to reveal parental values and beliefs without the parents’ permission,” said Stacy McAuliffe, who kept her fourth-grade daughter home from Wildwood School on Monday morning and also cared for two other children of parents who didn’t want them to take the exam. “Their essay tests and their stories, I feel, undermine family values and religion.”

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Because of such concerns, state officials have dropped the word feelings from this year’s exam, said William L. Rukeyser, spokesman for the state Department of Education.

But, Rukeyser said, the test asks open-ended questions to assess whether students really understand what they read.

In addition to concerns about the subjectivity of the questions, there have also been protests around the state about some of the content of the test, such as the Alice Walker short story. Parents have objected that some of the stories are too depressing and violent for students.

Even many school officials and parents who support CLAS said they think that the test needs to be improved.

Gross, for example, said he has asked the state to consider using less controversial literary excerpts. “Some of the stories tend to raise concerns that tend to draw attention away from what CLAS was designed to do,” he said.

But Gross said he has urged protesters to take their complaints directly to the state.

“The state’s developed a new test,” he said. “There are obviously some problems with it. We’ve got to give them a chance to work them out.”

And, he added: “I’m very upset that they’re up here beating up on the districts. We’re obeying state law.”

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Responses to criticism of the California Learning Assessment System. B3