9486 in the collection
Proposed high school exit exams raise concern among Oregonians
People testifying at a state hearing say weakness in one subject could deny diplomas to otherwise strong students. And what about those kids who are marginal--or worse? Where do Oregonians want to draw the line? Do they really want a test company to decide? Does the public want to shut students out of the chance for decent employment? Is the public willing to support families whose breadwinners can never get anything better than a minimum wage job?
By Bill Graves
SALEM -- Oregon's proposed high school exit exam would unfairly deny diplomas to good students who struggle with a single academic weakness, warned people testifying at a state hearing on the test Wednesday.
Several expressed concerns about math, but Tigard-Tualatin school board member Jill Zurschmeide said she was worried about speech. Zurschmeide said her autistic daughter is earning good grades in school and is on the path to college but will never pass the speech standard needed to graduate.
"She speaks in a monotone that is difficult to understand," Zurschmeide told a hearings officer for the Oregon Department of Education. "It is painful for her to speak. But she is an accomplished, natural writer."
The hearing offered Oregonians their first chance to weigh in on the Oregon Board of Education's plan to require students to pass reading, writing, math and speech exams to get a high school diploma.
This fall's high school freshmen -- the class of 2012 -- would be the first class required to pass the tests to graduate. Oregon would become the 27th state to demand that high school students pass an exam to earn a diploma. The state board will vote next month on whether to adopt the test.
Washington state required an exit exam for the first time this spring and will reveal Monday how many seniors passed and will graduate.
Eight people testifying Wednesday at the state Department of Education's hearing raised concerns about Oregon's proposed exam.
Art Rutkin, a former teacher and administrator with grandchildren in the Tigard-Tualatin School District, said Oregon should avoid "all or nothing" tests and allow districts to use alternatives tests for students who may fall short in just one area, such as math.
"If this process is done well," he said, "almost all students should receive an academic diploma, or in my opinion, it will be a system failure and not an individual failure."
Under the state proposal, seniors must pass long-standing 10th-grade benchmarks for math and reading, which are measured with a multiple-choice test. They also would have to pass the state's 10th-grade essay test to demonstrate writing proficiency, and local districts would be responsible to test students for speech.
Wayne Neuburger, former testing director for the state Department of Education, warned that schools could get themselves into legal hot water if they didn't find a way to measure speech in a consistent way across the state.
Judy Lowery, president of the Oregon Council for the Social Studies, said the state was putting so much emphasis on basic skills that it could squeeze history, civics and geography out of the curriculum, particularly in elementary and middle schools.
In written testimony, several people argued against a high school exit exam.
The Oregon Education Association, the state's largest teachers union, also has concerns, wrote Larry Wolf, president. "If the goal is for all students to succeed, there must be more than one measure to success," he said.
The state board proposes that students also could use a national test such as the SAT in lieu of the state exams. Local districts also could develop their own measures for the essential skills as long as they could prove they were equivalent to the state's. Critics, however, say that could provide a backdoor option for students to circumvent rigorous standards.
The proposed test concerns many educators because one-third of Oregon sophomores fail the state reading exam and nearly half fall short in math and writing. But other states have shown that students try harder on tests when their diplomas depend on passing and the vast majority then meet graduation standards.
— Bill Graves
The Oregonian
2008-05-29
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
[1] 2 3 4 5 6 Next >> Last >>
