Beginning with the Class of 2006, students in California have been required to take an "exit exam" in order to graduate. The results tell the world whether students can read at the 10th-grade level and do math at the seventh- and eighth-grade level.
In a state where too many schools were simply passing kids along who hadn't learned much, the test has given new meaning to a high school diploma.
The latest results are in, and the good news is that more students are passing the test on a first try. Of 477,000 10th-graders in the Class of 2011 who took the test for the first time this spring, nearly 80 percent passed, up from 76 percent for the Class of 2006.
That means, however, that nearly 100,000 students in the Class of 2011 must still pass the test to graduate. They'll have two more opportunities in 11th grade and five chances in 12th grade.
Most will eventually pass. In the graduating Class of 2009, for example, more than 90 percent of students passed in time to graduate with their classmates. And the 45,000 students who did not pass are eligible to continue to take the test and earn a high school diploma. This is not the end for them.
Now for the bad news. While the Legislature backed off an attempt to suspend the exit exam for all students, it did pass a new exemption for special education students – a big backward step. School districts now will be required to give high school diplomas to special education students who have not passed the exit exam.
This seesaw, discriminatory treatment – essentially giving "second class" diplomas to special education students – should stop.
For the first time, special education students in the Class of 2008 were required to pass the California high school exit exam in order to graduate. That requirement was having positive effects in giving special ed students more access to the regular curriculum.
A majority (54 percent) of special education students in the Class of 2008 passed the exam. And nearly 57 percent in the Class of 2009 passed. The state still has a long way to go in making sure special education kids get the skills they need to get a high school diploma.
Kids who are having trouble learning to read or who are acting out certainly need special assistance to improve their academic progress.
But a blanket exemption, as Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell has said, is "an irresponsible and shortsighted shift in education policy that threatens to shortchange the quality of education for our students with disabilities." It "does nothing to help prepare them for success after high school."
For all students, the exit exam requirement has been doing what it is supposed to – providing new incentives for parents, teachers and students to pay attention and demand better results.
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