4 Districts to Exempt Students From CLAS Tests : Education: Officials say children whose parents request it will not be given the controversial exams.

Skirting state law to appease opponents of the new California assessment tests, several Ventura County school districts have agreed to exempt individual children from the exams.

At least four school districts--Fillmore Unified, Oxnard Elementary, Oxnard Union High School and Mesa Union--have agreed to honor the requests of parents who want their children excused from the California Learning Assessment System exams, despite a state law requiring that all students take the tests.

And other districts, such as Ventura Unified, are giving implicit permission to parents who request to have their children excused from the exams.

Ventura school board members agreed Tuesday that they could fulfill their legal responsibility by simply placing the test in front of students, without forcing them to take it.

Officials from the Antelope Valley Union High School District refused to even administer the tests, a stand that brought warnings from state education officials that their actions could result in removal from office.

Antelope Valley board president Billy Pricer said he wants the tests “re-examined and re-evaluated,” and vowed to withhold them.

Meanwhile, Simi Valley school trustees are among the first in Ventura County to review the tests themselves and publicly express support for them as a valuable assessment tool.

“I found none of the things that were alleged to be in the test by some of the groups” opposing CLAS, Simi Valley board member Doug Crosse said. “I found the literature to be age-appropriate. I found the literature to have a lot of socially redeeming values, to be realistic.”

All California school districts are legally required to administer the CLAS exams this spring to students in the fourth, fifth, eighth and 10th grades.

“They have to give it and kids have to take it,” said Susie Lange, spokeswoman for the state Department of Education.

State education officials have advised districts that they have no legal authority to excuse individual students from the exams, Lange said, but so far, the department is not considering legal action against districts that agree to such exemptions.

Sherry Loofbourrow, president of the California School Boards Assn., estimated that dozens of the state’s 1,000 school districts are agreeing to excuse students from the CLAS exams.

Across the state, anti-CLAS groups have fanned opposition to the tests by passing out copies of materials, supposedly excerpted from CLAS, that include stories some parents consider too dark or disturbing for their children.

But Lange said much of the material being passed out by CLAS opponents is not on the 1994 tests. “They’re basing their complaints primarily on bad information,” she said.

Times correspondents Julie Fields and Sharon Moeser contributed to this story.