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9486 in the collection
State Education Official Seeks to Delay Exit Exam
Read 3 versions of the same dismal story.
Far down in the first piece State secretary of education Kerry Mazonni makes this claim: "Having the exit exam in place has improved curriculum and instruction, and it has focused resources so that more students are getting the help they need to master tough standards." See weasel Governor Davis' version of this statement in the third piece. No matter who mouths the Business Roundtable rhetoric, nothing could be further from the truth: We have plenty of evidence that high-stakes testing is destroying curruriculum. curriculum.
I fondly think of the California Exit Exam as the test that pictures Edna St. Vincent Millay's mother as a matronly black woman.
State Education Official Seeks to Delay Exit Exam
Duke Helfand, Los Angeles Times
The president of the State Board of Education, reacting to a new report that highlights the high failure rate on California's high school exit exam, said Thursday that the test should be postponed as a graduation requirement for up to three years.
Students in the class of 2004 must pass the math and English-language arts portions of the exam to earn a diploma, according to current rules that have provoked protests from many worried parents and teens.
Only about 60% of the students in the class of 2004 have passed the math portion of the test so far, according to the state-mandated report released Thursday. Even after additional attempts over the next year, about 20% of that class still might be denied diplomas, the study estimated.
Reed Hastings, president of the state board, said he now favors a delay of the requirement until the class of 2005, or perhaps two more after that, so students can be better prepared for an exam with such high stakes.
"It becomes a question of, not whether to delay it, but for how long to delay it," he said.
The board is expected to decide on a possible delay by July. Votes of six out of the 10 members are required to change the policy.
Two board members, Nancy Ichinaga and Suzanne Tacheny, said Thursday that they also support a delay, but did not offer a time frame.
A newly appointed member, Luis Rodriguez, said he had not seen the report and had not made up his mind about a postponement. Other members could not be reached or did not return calls.
Ichinaga said she is opposed to using a single test to determine whether students graduate high school. But given that the state Legislature mandated such a test, Ichinaga, a former elementary school principal in Inglewood, said she wants to give students every opportunity to pass.
"There will always be kids who have a hard time. We have to figure out how to accommodate them. And we haven't done that," she said. "It's just easier to say, 'Here are the requirements and if you don't make it, tough luck.' "
The high school exit exam — which covers language arts material through 10th grade and math through basic algebra — has stirred opposition among parents of students who have failed it multiple times.
Anti-test activists have organized demonstrations around California to pressure state officials to drop or delay the graduation requirement.
The new evaluation of the test, produced for the state by the Human Resources Research Organization in Virginia, found that California middle schools and high schools are paying much closer attention to the state's academic standards in math and English, upon which the exit exam is based.
Schools also are offering more remedial and supplemental classes for students who do not pass the exams.
"Having the exit exam in place has improved curriculum and instruction, and it has focused resources so that more students are getting the help they need to master tough standards," said Kerry Mazzoni, the state's secretary of education.
But the report also found that a "lack of prerequisite skills," along with inadequate motivation and parental support, may be contributing to the failures.
The class of 2004 is at a particular disadvantage in math because many were not taught algebra in middle school and missed the opportunity for a grounding in skills required to pass the test, the study found. That has changed for subsequent classes.
The report offers a menu of alternatives for dealing with these problems: California could lower the passing standard in math. Students have to answer 55% of the questions correctly to pass. Lowering that figure could mean a loss of credibility for the exam, the report warns. And the state could delay enforcement of the exam, but that could undermine momentum schools have gained around the standards instruction.
Tacheny of the state board said the goal of the test should not get lost in the debate over its enforcement.
"The most important message we need for schools to hear is that kids need these skills on the test to be prepared for college and today's economy," she said.
Here's coverage of same story in The New York Times. It makes clear that standards are driving this destruction of public education.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/02/education/02EXAM.html?ex=1052882306&ei=1&en=5c7a540268a1a087
California Report Tallies Cost of 'Exit Exam'
By Greg Winter
One out of every five high school students in California will be denied diplomas next year if the state forges ahead with a plan to require seniors to pass an "exit exam" before graduating, according to a state-commissioned study released yesterday.
The test itself is sound and well-tailored to the state's academic standards, the report concluded. But so many students have yet to master those standards that compelling them to pass the exam next year, as planned, would probably "lead to an intensive debate over the adequacy of instructional opportunities and fairness."
"Are we willing at this point in time to deny diplomas?" Phil Spears, director of standards and assessment for the California Department of
Education, asked after reviewing the study. "That's what the state board is going to have to deal with."
The study is likely to be adopted as evidence by each side in the debate over high school exit exams, which have been adopted by at least 18 states.
Proponents of the exams have already begun to cite the California study as proof that the exams can impel schools to adhere to state standards and fairly measure student mastery of them. Critics point to the low rate of passing as a sign of the stunted educational careers and dropouts to come.
"There are huge numbers of students who have never been taught the material," said Sid Wolinski, legal director of Disability Rights
Advocates, which has sued the state to ensure that students with learning disabilities are not disproportionately penalized by the test. "It's a world-class exam imposed on a third-world educational system."
Under California law, graduating seniors will have to pass the exam beginning in 2004, and the State Board of Education has just three more months to decide whether to push back that date or let it stand.
The report released yesterday is the last in a three-year evaluation designed to help the board make that decision. While it stopped short of telling the board to hold off on imposing any consequences, the report did recommend that passing scores be lowered, difficult subject matter be removed or some other modifications be made to ensure that more of next year's seniors receive diplomas.
The problem, the study found, is that the state's academic standards were adopted only recently, in 1997. So by the time they began filtering down to classrooms, many students had already moved on to
high school, bypassing years of fundamental instruction that they would eventually be tested on, like algebra.
The report found that California schools had done an admirable job incorporating those standards into their curriculums and offering remedial classes to make sure that students had a chance to learn what they might have missed.
Nonetheless, it said, "efforts to overcome this lack have been of limited effectiveness in many high schools."
The outcome is that although 81 percent of students in the class of 2004 have already passed the English part of the exit exam, only 62
percent have passed the math part. The results on both should be higher by next spring, but unless they improve "dramatically," as the report put it, about 20 percent of students will fail the math requirement, leaving them ineligible for a diploma.
The outlook is worse for so-called disadvantaged students. Only 54 percent of low-income students, 37 percent of nonnative English-speakers and 22 percent of students with learning disabilities in the class of 2004 have passed their math requirement so far.
There is reason to think the situation will soon be brighter, the report said. New textbooks are being introduced in the lower grades, and schools are more closely aligning their curriculums with the state standards reflected on the test. But how much better future classes will perform "is unknown," it said, in part because the prospect of budget cuts puts remedial classes and staff training in jeopardy.
Officials at the State Department of Education declined to speculate on whether the consequences of failing the exit exam would be postponed. But they took the report as an endorsement of the exam in general, because it showed a vast improvement in the number of schools adhering to state standards.
"The debate now is over the timing," said Rick Miller, a department spokesman. "It's an important debate that we're going to have, but I
don't think the report leaves any doubt that the test is a solid path. Whether it's next year, the year after or the one after that, the exit exam is going to become a requirement for graduation."
Now here's the Associated Press version posted on MSNBC.com:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/908500.asp?0na=x234F9m1
Calif. Graduations in Jeopardy
Report: Fifth of Class of 2004 won’t pass required exit exam
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SACRAMENTO, Calif., May 2 — A fifth of California’s high school students expected to graduate in 2004 won’t receive their diplomas if they are required to pass a state-mandated exit exam, a new report says.
Students start taking the test as sophomores and can retake it three times a year until their graduation date.
TWENTY PERCENT of all incoming seniors will fail the mathematics section of the California High School Exit Exam because they have not taken the necessary classes to learn the test subjects, according to the report, released Thursday by the Human Resources Research Organization. The test also has an English-language arts section.
The Class of 2004 is the first class required to pass the exam, though the state Board of Education can postpone the graduation requirement.
After seeing the report, board President Reed Hastings told the Los Angeles Times said he favors delaying the test for up to three years so students can be better prepared.
“It becomes a question of, not whether to delay it, but for how long to delay it,” Hastings said. The board has until August to make its decision.
The evaluation of the California High School Exit Exam was ordered by the Legislature when it passed a law in 2001 giving the state Board of Education the option to postpone the graduation requirement.
Students start taking the test as sophomores and can retake it three times a year until their graduation date. An analysis of scores at 1,843 high schools found that more than 80 percent of the class has already passed the English portion of the test, but just over 60 percent has passed the math portion.
The evaluation found that lessons in some schools weren’t aligned with the state’s standards, adopted in 1997, until the Class of 2004 was already in high school.
The researches also said that about half of students who aren’t fluent in English and three-quarters of special education students won’t pass the math portion.
“Can we really flunk up to two-thirds of kids with disabilities and say this is a motivating way to hold students and administrators accountable?” said Bruce Fuller, professor for education and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and researcher for Public Analysis for California Education.
Gov. Gray Davis said in a statement released Thursday that the test had improved curriculum and instruction and is “a powerful motivator” for both students and schools.
“All over California, students are studying harder and reaching a higher bar,” Davis said.
— Duke Helfand
State Education Official Seeks to Delay Exit Exam
Los Angeles Times
May 2, 2003
http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-exit2may02,1,7428598.story?coll=la%2Dnews%
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
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