SAN FRANCISCO - A judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by eight school districts that demanded that students be allowed to take standardized tests in Spanish, their native language.

The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court in June 2005, claimed that testing students only in English does not accurately measure the academic abilities of students still learning the language.

The plaintiffs argued that the federal No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to assess English learners in a "valid and reliable manner" that could include offering tests in their native language.

But Judge Richard Kramer disagreed, ruling on Monday that it would be impractical to translate tests into all the different languages spoken in California. He said it was appropriate to test in English given the state's duty to make sure students speak the language and that voters approved English-only instruction in 1996.

Many of the schools in the districts that sued are under sanctions from the No Child Left Behind law because their nonnative English speakers scored poorly on standardized tests. Those schools could eventually be taken over by the state or a charter school organization.

The No Child Left Behind Act, signed by President Bush in 2002, mandates schools to show academic improvement among their students each year. It requires that all students to be proficient in math and English by 2014 and allows states to test students in their native languages for up to three years.

California requires Spanish-speaking students to take the tests after one year. This year, it began testing kids in Spanish, but has no plans to use those tests to rate school performance.

The case is Coachella Valley Unified School District v. California.