A San Francisco judge ordered state officials Thursday not to release test scores due to come out next week that would have made it
possible for the first time to compare the performance of all California
public school students to those across the nation.
Municipal Judge Ronald E. Quidachay, filling in for a Superior Court
judge, issued the order in response to petitions from the Berkeley and
Oakland school districts. Officials of many school districts have
objected to the tests because the state required all students--including
the roughly one in four who do not speak English fluently--to take the
exams in English.
Releasing school-by-school scores that include tests of students
examined in a language they do not understand would unfairly make urban
school districts with large numbers of immigrants look worse than they
are, educators have argued.
The judge's order only blocks release of the scores of students who
are not fluent in English, but officials say the state is not prepared to
separate those scores in time to release data as scheduled next week.
"It's unfortunate that this has happened at the eleventh hour," said
Doug Stone, a state Department of Education spokesman. "This has thrown a
huge monkey wrench into the department's careful planning."
Gov. Pete Wilson, who sponsored the testing program and insisted that
the English-language tests be given to all students, angrily denounced
the judge's ruling. Wilson aides said that while a temporary restraining
order normally cannot be appealed, state lawyers are examining the
possibility of seeking an emergency ruling from the Court of Appeal to
dissolve the order.
Unless a higher court intervenes, the judge's temporary restraining
order will last until a hearing scheduled for July 16. At that point, the
judge could issue a further injunction.
Although Quidachay did not release an opinion with his order, he
apparently accepted arguments by the school districts that testing
students in a language they do not speak violates the federal Equal
Education Opportunity Act. The lawyers cited earlier court decisions that
held that students who have limited English fluency must be tested in
their own language.
"It's deplorable that one judge and a number of education bureaucrats
are so fearful of accountability for how poorly education is being
provided in parts of our state," Wilson said in a statement.
"They are spending their resources on denying knowledge to parents
through the courtroom instead of investing resources to provide education
to children in the classroom."
But Berkeley Supt. Jack McLaughlin defended his district's move. "It
just doesn't seem appropriate" to publish the scores of schools serving
large numbers of children who don't speak English, he said. Twelve
percent of Berkeley's 9,100 students are not fluent in English.
"The students don't understand or read English, yet they're tested in
English, so why should their scores be out there?"
The test scores have been eagerly awaited by many parents, politicians
and education officials because they will, for the first time in years,
allow direct school-by-school comparisons of performance. Many educators,
however, dreaded what they feared would be news that showed California
students lagging behind their peers across the nation.
The case began when the San Francisco Unified School District refused
to abide by the testing law and state officials went to court in an
effort to force it to comply. San Francisco won two rounds in court,
allowing it to avoid testing 6,000 non-fluent students.
Thursday's ruling came in response to a move by Berkeley and Oakland
officials to intervene in the San Francisco case to prevent the state
from publishing the test scores June 30, as required by the state's
testing law. The state's plan has been to release the test scores to the
public through the Internet.
Ironically, even as some districts fought to block the release of the
scores, other districts have begun to publicize them ahead of the state's
schedule. Twenty-three of the 27 districts in Orange County have released
their test scores, and the giant Los Angeles Unified School District--the
state's largest--plans to do so next week.
L.A. Unified, however, had already made arrangements with the test
publisher, Harcourt Brace Educational Measurement, to report the scores
of English speaking and non-English-speaking students separately.
Los Angeles Supt. Ruben Zacarias said that the district would halt
further distribution of individual scores to the parents of about 200,000
students who are not fluent in English.
The judge's ruling, however, will block the issuance of statewide
totals and prevent the state from forcing local districts to make their
scores public.
In the last few weeks, educators across the state had come together in
hundreds of meetings in hotel rooms and conference rooms, steeling
themselves with answers to questions about the meaning of the avalanche
of data on the performance of 4.1 million students in grades two through
11.
Students were tested in reading, writing and math. Students through
eighth grade also took a spelling test, and students in higher grades
took exams in social studies and science.
The state conducted briefings for administrators, school board members
and reporters, stressing that the students to whom California students
were to be compared were different from those tested here.
For example, among the students nationally to whom California children
would be compared, less than 2% have limited English fluency.
In addition to the current case, the San Francisco school district has
filed a further complaint in court seeking to completely invalidate the
testing program.
"Our position is that the results . . . should not be kept in
students' permanent records because the test violates the state's own
statutes," said Sandina Robbins, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco
district.
The district argues that a student's scores on the Stanford 9 test
could stain the record of an applicant to college or that they could be
used inappropriately to place students who simply don't speak English in
classes for the learning disabled.
Copyright Los Angeles Times
