School Trustees Vote to Postpone State CLAS Tests : Education: Newport-Mesa board may decide Tuesday not to give the controversial exams at all, citing state law violation.

Newport-Mesa Unified School District trustees Friday voted to postpone administering the state’s controversial standardized CLAS tests to eighth- and 10th-graders until after a meeting Tuesday night, when they will consider not giving the tests at all.

Saying they believe portions of the California Learning Assessment System tests violate state law because students would be required to answer questions about moral issues without parental permission, school board members who voted 5-0 for the postponement Friday took a major step toward defying a separate state mandate that requires them to give the tests.

Four other school districts statewide have already taken that step, but Newport-Mesa would become the largest to do so.

But the board also will consider delaying the tests further while it seeks written permission from all parents to give them, officials said. Another option would be to allow students to take only the portions of the exams that board members do not find objectionable, they said.

Board members said they are convinced that at least five of the 11 segments of the upper-grade reading and writing tests are illegal under the state’s Education Code. But they said they will seek public input, obtain more information from the state, and include two board members who could not attend Friday’s emergency closed-session before making a decision Tuesday.

“We would never vote to administer those (five controversial sections) under any circumstances,” said Trustee Martha Fluor. “The state Department of Education has placed us in an untenable position. They have absolutely destroyed all confidence. The judgment they made on some of this is just horrendous. I am appalled.”

CLAS has faced a host of criticism throughout the state over the past several weeks. Several conservative groups have filed lawsuits objecting to the alleged posing of moral questions, and hundreds of parents have pulled their students out of the exams. Processing problems that plagued last year’s exams have further hurt the test’s credibility.

CLAS was introduced last year as a revolution in educational testing. The performance-based assessments evaluate students’ thought processes in addition to their ability to derive correct answers, and use tough statewide achievement standards.

About 1 million fourth-, fifth-, eighth- and 10th-graders in more than 7,000 schools statewide are scheduled to take the reading, writing, math, science and social studies exams this spring. The program will cost nearly $26 million.

Elsewhere in the state Friday, opponents of the exam said they had obtained copies of the confidential tests, but promised they would not disseminate them publicly until Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert H. O’Brien rules on whether the exams violate the Education Code. O’Brien said Friday he will rule early next week.

In Sacramento, the State Department of Education promised to seek a court order to force the Antelope Valley Union High School District to administer the exams, and the Assn. of California School Administrators asked the Education department not to release this year’s results until scoring problems are ironed out.

Meanwhile, Assemblywoman Doris Allen scheduled a public hearing on the wide variety of concerns about the tests for Thursday at 6:30 p.m. in the Huntington Beach City School District board room.

In announcing their decision to delay giving the CLAS tests--which were scheduled to begin Monday--Newport-Mesa trustees also revealed the names of several novels and stories that are excerpted in the exams, which the state has been trying to keep confidential.

The works named were: “What I Want to be When I Grow Up,” by Martha Brooks; “All the Years of Her Life,” by Morley Callaghan; “My Father and I,” by Par Lagerk-vist; “Looking for Work,” by Gary Soto; “My Parents,” by Stephen Spender, and Richard Wright’s “Black Boy.”

Board members stressed that they were criticizing the questions and writing tasks students were assigned--not the literature itself. CLAS is a several-step test in which students read excerpts from published works, then do a variety of individual and group writing exercises.

Susie Lange, spokeswoman for the state Department of Education, said she is confident that most of the material Newport-Mesa trustees highlighted does not violate the Education Code, and criticized board members for revealing the contents of the exam.

“There’s no control over (the test) once you have bits and pieces of it out. We can no longer vouch for fairness,” Lange said.

All school board members throughout the state were given the chance to read the exam booklets this week, but only after they agreed to keep the documents secret. Before reviewing the material Wednesday and Thursday, each Newport-Mesa trustee signed a release pledging confidentiality.

But Fluor defended the board’s release of the titles, saying “the public has a right to know what the selections are that are on the test.”

Times Education Writer Jean Merl contributed to this story.