Countywide : Judge Refuses Order Barring CLAS Tests

An Orange County judge on Wednesday refused to order two local school districts not to give the state’s controversial standardized tests to six objecting students, saying the issue is moot because the districts exempted the students from the tests, which have already been given.

Meanwhile, state education officials said Wednesday that they will consider legal action against the Fullerton School District, which has refused to administer the tests, but not against Santa Ana Unified, which gave the tests and then voted to withhold them from the state in protest.

The controversies all concern the California Learning Assessment System, which more than 1 million fourth-, fifth-, eighth- and 10th-graders in some 7,000 schools are taking this spring.

In a hearing in Municipal Court in Newport Beach on Wednesday morning, Judge Richard Luesebrink refused to prevent the Placentia-Yorba Linda and Tustin Unified school districts from giving CLAS to the six students, but only after the districts agreed to provide a 30-day warning to the complaining parents prior to any future testing.

Although school districts are required by law to administer CLAS, most districts across the state--including Placentia-Yorba Linda and Tustin--have allowed parents to exempt their children from the test. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit did just that, but were concerned that the children might be tested in the future without their permission.

Attorney John A. Mendoza, who represented the plaintiffs, said his clients will now consider pursuing a claim for damages, arguing that several of the students’ civil rights were violated when teachers gave them practice CLAS tests without parental permission.

In the Fullerton case, the school board Tuesday night reaffirmed its decision not to administer the tests despite state warnings that it must. Fullerton is one of six districts statewide not giving the tests, state officials said.

Last week, Fullerton Supt. Duncan Johnson sent a letter to the state explaining that delays in sending the tests and mixed messages about whether students could be exempted led the district to its boycott.

“Unfortunately, the CLAS test as it now stands is building opposition, controversy and conflict,” Johnson wrote. “The children of California deserve better.”

But state Supt. of Public Instruction William D. Dawson responded with a letter reminding Johnson of the state law that mandates the tests.

“We think they’re totally disobeying the law,” Department of Education spokeswoman Susie Lange said Wednesday. “We don’t take that lightly. By refusing to give the test at all, (the district) has given parents no choice at all.”

In Santa Ana, thousands of students took the exams in reading, writing, math, science and social studies earlier this month, but school board members voted Tuesday to withhold the completed test booklets from the state.

Lange said it is unlikely that the department would go after the test papers in court, but nonetheless criticized the district’s move.

“What they’re doing is handicapping themselves,” Lange said of Santa Ana. “The purpose of having a statewide exam is to provide one consistent measure that can be used from Eureka to San Diego . . . so the state taxpayer had some sense of an overall accountability on how the public school system performs.”

By withholding the tests, Lange said, Santa Ana school board members are “depriving the community of any information on how they do compared to other students throughout the state.”