EDITORIAL : NAKED EMPERORS; THEIR ATTEMPT TO SUPPRESS SCHOOL TEST SCORES BETRAYS THE PUBLIC TRUST.

SOME school officials are once again trying to pull the wool over the taxpayers' eyes in a blatant attempt to cover up their own mismanagement and betrayal of the public's trust.

The culprits this time are the Oakland and Berkeley school districts, aided and abetted by the Association of California Urban School Districts.

They don't want the taxpayers to learn about the poor performance of too many of the districts' students on the Stanford 9 achievement test in English. So they went before a San Francisco Superior Court judge Thursday and won a temporary restraining order blocking the legally required publication of test scores for districts and individual schools statewide.

According to the plaintiffs, publication of the test results would harm the districts and their schools because the low scores of students with limited English-speaking ability would drag down the averages.

``If those children, by definition, lack sufficient English skills, then testing their academic ability in English makes no sense and is discriminatory,'' said Laura Schulkind, an attorney for the Oakland and Berkeley school districts.

Baloney.

If there are any victims of discrimination here, they are the children of parents who speak little or no English and whose advancement in English has been retarded by bilingual education and other boondoggles. California voters attempted to correct this injustice by approving Proposition 227, which sharply limits bilingual instruction.

The real objective of the lawsuit is to protect politicians, bureaucrats and others by keeping the facts from the public. The cover-up artists only compound their crimes of obfuscation when they suggest that the taxpayers aren't sophisticated enough to understand why some schools and districts will have lower scores than others.

Concerned parents and others already are well aware of the impact of English skills, income, parental education backgrounds and other factors on test scores. We believe most of them are capable of dealing with the news. It's the officials who are in denial who want to suppress it.

The California Public Records Act says, in part, that ``access to information concerning the conduct of the people's business is a fundamental and necessary right of every person in this state.'' Those words should be applicable to tests that were conducted in an attempt to determine how well - or poorly - California schools are doing.

Fortunately, the temporary restraining order is only that - temporary. It might be lifted after a hearing scheduled for July 16.

In the meantime, we urge educators everywhere to voluntarily release the scores regardless of what happens in court.

Sure, some of these scores will be difficult to explain. But a refusal to cooperate would only cause more voters to suspect that school officials have something to hide and can't be trusted.