Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Brief Contends Trustees Defied State Law in Refusing CLAS Test : Education: Antelope Valley decision violated rights of parents and students, the document states. District attorneys say there is no legal requirement for the exam.

Trustees of the Antelope Valley Union High School District engaged in “an act of mutiny” last month when they voted to not administer the controversial statewide student assessment test, according to a brief filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Besides rebelling against state law, the board’s decision to not give CLAS violates the rights of parents and students, according to the brief filed on behalf of the parents of three Quartz Hill High School 10th-grade students.

“By defying state law,” the brief states, the district has “embarked upon a divisive course of action that denies children access to the information to be learned from taking the assessment tests and denies parents access to information necessary to judge the school system’s performance and the progress of their children in school.”

The 16-page brief was filed by People For the American Way in support of the state Department of Education, which earlier this month sued the high school district over its refusal to give the California Learning Assessment System test. The lawsuit seeks a court order mandating that the district administer CLAS. A hearing is set for June 6 in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Also on Wednesday, attorneys representing the high school district filed their response to the lawsuit, arguing that there is no legal requirement that CLAS be given.

“When we read the statute that says school districts are supposed to give this test, it says we’re supposed to give it in accordance with rules and regulations adopted by the state Board of Education,” said Frank J. Fekete, an attorney for the school district. “We have no evidence the state board has adopted rules and regulations.”

State education officials have repeatedly argued that every district in the state is required to administer the test, which is being given this year to more than 1 million students in the fourth, fifth, eighth and 10th grades.

Department of Education attorney Allan Keown declined to comment on either of Wednesday’s filings.

CLAS has been praised by its supporters as a revolutionary method of testing the critical thinking skills of students. Opponents, including the Antelope Valley school board, argue that the test violates the privacy rights of students and parents, contains passages that denigrate the family and is unnecessarily shrouded in secrecy.

The high school board voted April 20 to not administer the test, becoming the first in the state to notify the Department of Education that it would not give CLAS. In all, there are six school districts, including Acton-Agua Dulce Unified, among the more than 1,000 in the state that have decided against administering the test.

Keown said additional lawsuits may be filed against the other districts as early as next week if they continue to refuse to give CLAS.

Fekete said the arguments set forth in the filing he submitted to the court Wednesday on behalf of the Antelope Valley district gets to the key problem with CLAS.

“In one sense, it’s a technical argument,” he said. “In another sense, it goes to the heart of the problem with this test, which is secrecy. Not just secrecy with the test, but with the process.

“If they had done this thing the way the Legislature had expected them to do, adopting rules and regulations in public, they could have solved these problems.”

Fekete expects the state will respond by saying the rules and regulations they already have related to assessment tests are sufficient. “But they’re not,” he said.