A ruling last week by Superior Court Judge Paul Alvarado dismissed a few of the legal claims by San Francisco and three other Bay Area school districts but left the core of their case intact. The main issue in the nonjury trial, scheduled to start Nov. 6, is whether English-only testing serves any legitimate educational purpose for students who have less than 30 months of public school instruction in the United States and are not fluent in English. What we're looking at is how well are these kids doing in academic subjects in English. Entering those scores in students' records, and using them to determine school funding, violates state and federal anti-discrimination laws as well as a state law requiring the tests to be accurate and reliable, the districts contend. Subjects include reading, writing and math, and for the higher grades, science, history and social science.
Schools can use test scores in deciding on placement and promotion of students.
San Francisco is the only district that refuses to administer the test to students who speak little or no English, a population the district estimates at 5,700 in its schools and nearly one-quarter of students statewide. The state unsuccessfully sought a court order in 1998 to require San Francisco to test all students until the legal dispute was resolved. The district is not seeking to recover the money in the current case, but Donato said a ruling that the English-only exams were illegal would be followed by a suit to restore the state funding, including past penalties. In his Oct. 10 ruling, Alvarado dismissed claims that required proof of deliberate discrimination, which the districts never asserted.