Pertinent California Ed. Code and Regulations

Title 5 Ca. Code of Regs., Div. 1, Chap. 2, Subchapter 3.75, section 852

(a) A parent or guardian may submit to the school a written request to excuse his or her child from any or all parts of any test provided pursuant to Education Code section 60640. A school district and its employees may discuss the Standardized Testing and Reporting program with parents and may inform parents of the availability of exemptions under Education Code section 60615. However, the school district and its employees shall not solicit or encourage any written exemption request on behalf of any child or group of children.

Ed. Code

  1. Except as otherwise provided in this article, or as necessary to meet requirements of federal law as it pertains to a particular employee or employees, no restriction shall be placed on the political activities of any officer or employee of a local agency.
    60611. No city, county, city and county, or district superintendent of schools or principal or teacher of any elementary or secondary school shall carry on any program of specific preparation of the pupils for the statewide pupil assessment program or a particular test used therein.
    60612. Upon adoption or approval of assessments pursuant to this chapter, the Superintendent of Public Instruction shall prepare and make available to parents, teachers, pupils, administrators, school board members, and the public easily understood materials describing the nature and purposes of the assessments, the systems of scoring, and the uses to which the assessments will be put.
    60615. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a parent's or guardian's written request to school officials to excuse his or her child from any or all parts of the assessments administered pursuant to this chapter shall be granted.

LEGAL ALERT:
SETTLEMENT REACHED IN STAR LITIGATION
The Berkeley, Oakland, Hayward and San Francisco school districtsrecently achieved statewide relief in their lawsuit against the Stateover administration of the SAT-9 test to English language learners. Inparticular, they obtained significant concessions on their claims that: 1) a virtual ban on advising ELL families on the SAT-9 violated the freespeech rights of school district staff; and 2) judging school
performance solely on the basis of SAT-9 scores was unfair.
Major provisions that will affect your school district:
1. A school district and its employees now may initiate discussionswith parents/guardians on advantages and disadvantages of the SAT-9,provide individualized advice on the appropriateness of the SAT-9 for aparticular student, and inform them of the availability of parentalwaivers. The only limit on staff is that they may not "solicit" or"encourage" parental waivers;
2. English language learners enrolled in California public schools ingrades 2-11 must take the SAT-9, subject to applicable IEPs andstatutory exemptions such as parental waivers;
3. If a school fails to meet API growth targets solely due to the lowAPI scores of its English language learners, the district may submit ageneral waiver to the State Board of Education. If the schooldemonstrates improvement in ELL performance on the English LanguageDevelopment test, the Board may grant the waiver. Board policy willexpress a presumption in favor of granting such waivers;
4. Students taking the test under standard and non-standardaccommodations will constitute "participation" for the purpose ofeligibility in the Governor’s Performance Award Program and other awardprograms based on the API;
5. The State Superintendent’s guidelines for test use must advise thatSAT-9 scores may reflect both a student’s English language ability andacademic knowledge and admonish educators not to rely solely on thesescores in making education decisions; and
6. The State Superintendent of Instruction must produce an annualreport on the primary language academic achievement tests administeredunder the STAR program.
Ruiz & Sperow, LLP (counsel to Berkeley, Oakland and Hayward in this
litigation) is available to advise you and your staff on implementation
of the settlement in your district – in particular your rights to
communicate with parents regarding the SAT-9 and parental waivers.