Language lawsuit fails in appeals court

School achievement tests do not have to be offered in languages other than English, a state appeals court ruled on Thursday, rejecting arguments in a lawsuit filed by Coachella Valley Unified and other school districts. A vast majority of Coachella Valley Unified's students are considered English-language learners and the district is under state sanctions and an academic trustee for poor performance on standardized assessments. "Districts like Coachella are going to continue to be severely disadvantaged under the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) Act," said Marc Coleman, a Long Beach attorney representing the districts. "They're going to continue to suffer sanctions unjustly, not because they're not doing a great job with kids but because test scores don't demonstrate that." The First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco ruling upheld a 2007 decision by a San Francisco judge who also ruled against the bilingual-education groups and nine school districts that sued to overturn the state's English-only testing methods.