State Won’t Sue District Over Refusal to Give CLAS Tests

State education officials said this week they will not sue Redondo Beach schools to force officials to administer the controversial CLAS tests to eighth-graders.

The state had threatened the district with a lawsuit after trustees voted last month to ban English and writing portions of the tests, but state officials said they were running out of time. Classes at Redondo schools end June 22.

School officials in Antelope Valley lost a battle with the state over testing last week when a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ordered the district to administer the tests. Redondo is one of six districts in the state to ban the exams.

In a letter to Redondo schools, acting state Supt. William D. Dawson urged Redondo trustees to reinstate the tests, arguing that the ruling against Antelope Valley also applied to Redondo schools.

But district officials balked, arguing the two cases were different.

Redondo trustees said the tests’ credibility and validity have been compromised by parental confusion and reports of controversy surrounding the exam.

Critics throughout the state have charged that the English and writing portions of the tests invade student privacy.

In a letter to Dawson last week, Supt. Beverly J. Rohrer asked that Redondo be excused from administering the remainder of the tests. She said many of the district’s students have already taken the exams, providing the state with a representative sampling of students’ abilities. The district had received no response from the state as of Tuesday.

The state has neither the time nor the attorneys to sue every district that refused to comply, Department of Education spokeswoman Susie Lange said this week.

“It would be foolish to pursue a legal action there is no remedy for,” Lange said.

State officials consider last week’s court ruling against Antelope Valley schools a precedent, she said. “There is no need to belabor this point by going at it school district to school district.”

In Redondo’s 6,500-student district, about 155 eighth-graders have not taken any of the reading and writing portions of the exam, while about 300 eighth-graders have taken most sections of the exams, school officials said.

Redondo trustee Rebecca Sargent said she believes the tests need to be reviewed by an independent panel before they are administered next year.

Sargent, who represents more than 5,000 trustees statewide as a member of the California School Boards Assn., said she disagreed with portions of the tests, but would not specify her complaints.

State education officials, who say they are considering critics’ concerns, plan to produce “a better exam next year,” Lange said.