CLAS Dispute Grows With Exam Release : Education: Material offered by Sen. Leonard appears to be part of this year’s confidential test. He softens his support, calling for review of the program.

Heaping fuel on the controversy over the California Learning Assessment System tests, state Sen. Bill Leonard (R-Big Bear Lake) released documents Wednesday that appear to include confidential copies of parts of this year’s tests.

Leonard issued a news release inviting public inspection, at his district and Capitol offices, of a bundle of materials he said were provided him anonymously. He conceded that he did not know whether the tests were genuine but said he offered them “to stop the rumors.”

Critics of the exams, which attempt to assess students’ higher-order thinking skills by asking them to write about their reactions to literature selections, have been circulating materials they purport to be this year’s test questions. Some have been discredited, but at least a small part of the material Leonard offered appears to be a current test booklet.

The state Department of Education declined comment Wednesday, but it has continually battled against disclosure of the annual tests, which are being given statewide through mid-June. Like other standardized exams, the copyrighted questions are kept confidential to protect the fairness and effectiveness of the tests.

Although members of the Senate will be allowed to see the 1994 tests today as part of an effort to battle rumors and quell public uneasiness about exam contents, Leonard said he will not review the tests because a required confidentiality pledge would prevent him from discussing the items.

Leonard said he believes that “by and large, it’s a pretty good examination.” But he said before he decides whether to continue his support for CLAS, he wants to consult testing experts to see whether “more neutral” writings should be included.

In other developments Wednesday, Gov. Pete Wilson’s education adviser called for letting virtually anyone see the reading and writing portions of the tests. Additionally, former state schools chief Bill Honig defended the groundbreaking testing system he helped develop and the department’s handling of it while acknowledging that improvements in both content and political support-building are needed.

Maureen DiMarco, Wilson’s secretary for child development and education and a candidate for state superintendent of public instruction, said the controversy had become so hot and plagued by “crazy charges” that “probably nothing less than full disclosure is going to satisfy anybody.”

“The issue really is confidence in this test,” said DiMarco at a Capitol news conference called to announce her endorsement by Wilson C. Riles, a former state schools superintendent.

A Los Angeles judge, who had studied the exams, ruled earlier this week that the tests do not invade students privacy or require advance parental permission, as critics have said in a series of suits around the state.

But DiMarco, who also said she has concerns about possible ethnic or racial stereotypes in the literary passages, said controversy is approaching “hysteria” and that she had privately urged acting state schools chief William D. Dawson to make the tests public.

DiMarco, in blasting the tests as “seriously flawed” earlier this week, drew fire from Dawson, who implied that criticism by DiMarco and the governor was tied to their political campaigns.

Former Supt. Honig, reached at home in San Francisco, said he was sorry to see political leaders who supported CLAS from its 1991 inception, such as DiMarco and Wilson, “jumping on the department” instead of working constructively to help it make improvements in the tests.

CLAS supporters who are taking the department to task for its handling of the controversies are playing into the hands of “extremist groups with an agenda” to undermine public education, Honig said.

He was forced to resign early last year when he was convicted on felony conflict-of-interest charges. The liberal, reform-minded Honig, who has appealed the conviction, blamed his prosecution on a campaign by his conservative political enemies, some of the same people he said are bent on bending public schools to their ideological will.

Nonetheless, Honig said there are problems that need to be addressed in the tests, ranging from better administration to an improved balance between open-ended, “performance-based” questions and more traditional types aimed at testing knowledge of facts.

He said the department probably should have done a better job of building political support and “opening up the process further” during test development so “when the attack came,” supporters could have been prepared to defend the exams with a unified voice.

“Any (radically different) system like this is going to have start-up problems and kinks,” Honig said. “You have to set those right. But they are not the end of the world. . . . Real leadership means that when something is under attack, and it is important, you find a way to fix it.”