Posted on 05/11/2005 8:47:23 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
A distressing number of California students have completed 12 years in classrooms but can't read on a tenth-grade level or do eighth-grade math. So they can't pass the state's high-school exit exam within six tries in three years. Should they graduate anyway?
The correct answer is no, they shouldn't.
Graduating kids who can't meet even minimum standards does them no favors – or their prospective colleges or employers. And it diminishes the meaning and reputation of high-school diplomas for all students, including the majority capable of passing the exit exam.
According to the Los Angeles Times, 83 percent of the class of 2006, when the exit exam is supposed to count, have already passed the English portion of the test, and 82 percent have passed the math.
Nevertheless, the exam, once slated to begin with the class of 2004 and since postponed until the class of 2006, may be postponed yet again. Critics want it delayed unless schools offer a "performance assessment" to kids in lieu of the exit exam, or until school districts statewide achieve perfection in teacher credentialing, student/teacher ratios and curriculum materials.
A bill mandating such subjective testing and a bill mandating such a utopian system at gargantuan cost have just been approved by legislative committees. If either measure becomes law, the California high-school exit exam as a genuine measure of student achievement will join the passenger pigeon in extinction.
That would suit critics concerned less about actual achievement than graduation, as though it were a rite of passage to which seat time entitles every student. It shouldn't suit parents, students or teachers who understand that an unearned diploma raises hopes that the working world quickly dashes.
And it especially shouldn't suit the many Latino and black parents whose children attend underachieving schools and whose achievement potential is consistently underrated by legislators, grass-roots groups and the teachers union looking for ever more votes, breaks and pay.
The choices are not lowering expectations and standards for all students, or leaving many minority kids behind, or spending more money Californians don't have. The choices are either spending the K-12 budget – $54 billion in 2005-06, or $10,084 per pupil – on the adults in a system stultified by union rules and bureaucratic bloat or spending it on the kids in the classroom, and meaningful results on a meaningful exit exam.
BINGO!
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
yep.
When I was a kid California had the best schools in the nation. We've been at the bottom for...20 years now?
A better mind than mine should look at the correlation between state and federal funding and the decline in performance. I'll bet a schoolboy's lunch apple they're connected.
I remember that lie. I never fell for it in the first place.
Recent competency tests show the teachers can't even do this.
I think this is a positive trend. As the economy advances, diplomas of all kinds are becoming less meaningful to employers. They "prove" that you spent a certain number of hours being exposed to ... some sort of schooling. They don't prove you can do a job.
As academic credentials become less correlated with meaningful education, employers will make a greater effort (because they have to) to evaluate an individual's potential as a productive employee.
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