Lefty blogger Mark Kleiman (via Kausfiles) alerted us to an upcoming conference that can only be described as anti-education (but pro-feelings!):

Conference Will Explore the California Exit Tests’ Relation to School Quality and Dropouts

On August 23, local, state and national education experts, advocates and students will join community members and educators in San José to focus on research on the potentially devastating effects of California’s High School Exit Exam on California students and communities.

Despite recent research studies showing an alarmingly low 71 percent high school graduation rate in California, the Exit Test will first be used as a bar to high school graduation in May 2006. This exam is being laid on a system of public schools with blatant inequalities.

According to the California Department of Education, more than 50,000 California potential 2006 graduates have not yet passed the English-Language Arts test and more than 50,000 California potential 2006 graduates have not passed the Mathematics test. Under present law, a student must pass both of these tests to receive the diploma they have been working toward for 12 years, regardless of their grades or the educational opportunities they have had.

… Speakers at the conference will also discuss the increasing use of high school exit tests during the last decade, the extremely negative effects the tests are having on students of color, English Language Learners, and students with disabilities. …

… The conference will end with a panel of California High School students discussing the effects these tests will have on them and their fellow students.

I think we can safely predict what the conference will recommend: a) no test, or b) lower standards, or c) pass everyone! or d) diplomas based on attendance. But then why bother to have an exit exam?

The absurd thing is that the exam barely tests anything. Back in April we wrote this about its ’standards:’

This is a test that provides students six chances, starting in their sophomore year, to prove that they can meet standards expected of sixth to eighth graders in math and tenth graders in English.

To pass, a test assistance site says “the passing score for the Mathematics section … is a Scale Score of 350 which represents an approximately Raw Score (percent correct) of 55%. The passing score for English-Language Arts section … is a Scale Score of 350 which represents an approximate Raw Score (percent correct) of 60%.”

Back in April, only 17% – 18% of next year’s seniors had not already cleared the hurdle. And these people want to weaken that?

Kleiman writes “While there are lots of rotten schools around, I doubt there are any that fail to teach enough reading and math to meet the (appallingly low) standards of the exam.”

We probably don’t agree on much with him, but we’re with him on that.

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H/t: Kausfiles and Eduwonk.

Technorati Tags: California, education, exit exam

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 18th, 2005 at 9:53 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under (Un)education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.