Judge denies second lawsuit over high school exit exam

AP ^ | 5/16/6 | JULIET WILLIAMS

[SmithL]

SACRAMENTO -- The judge who suspended California's high school exit exam for this year's graduating class ruled Tuesday in favor of the state in a separate lawsuit over the test.

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Robert Freedman rejected a request from Californians for Justice Education to grant a writ suspending the exam until the Legislature has time to consider alternatives.

The lawsuit claims Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell and the state Board of Education broke state law by failing to properly consider other assessments for students who can't pass the exam.

The judge agreed the state did not fully study alternatives until last year, but said the law did not give a timeline for that review.

Freedman's decision Tuesday does not affect his ruling last week, in which he issued a preliminary injunction that prohibited the state from penalizing students who failed the exam. That decision barred the state from withholding diplomas to students who have met all local graduation requirements other than passing the test, which took effect for the first time with this year's senior class.

As of March, about 47,000 high school seniors had failed to pass both the English and math sections of the exam.

In last week's ruling, Freedman sided with attorneys for a group of students who claimed the exam discriminates against poor and English-learner students because they do not have the same quality of education as students in more affluent districts.

[coconutt2000]

"To ensure that the poor stay poor, we must poorly educate them..." - Liberal Left

[generally]

Maybe this would not be such a huge issue if there were better standards for kids getting promoted from one grade to the next between K and 12.

[The Brush]

Maybe this would not be such a huge issue if there were better standards for kids getting promoted from one grade to the next between K and 12.

These kids need to get out into the workplace so they can begin complaining about being underpaid.

[FormerACLUmember]

Judicial tyranny on the liberal slave plantation. Can't be educating these uppity black or hispanic children. Liberals assume minority children are inferior, and by God we will keep them that way!

Nothing whatsoever has fundamentally changed in the slave owning democrat party since 1820.

[freespirited]

In last week's ruling, Freedman sided with attorneys for a group of students who claimed the exam discriminates against poor and English-learner students because they do not have the same quality of education as students in more affluent districts.

So does this mean the bar exam is discriminatory if every law school in California does not offer the same quality education as Stanford?

The only "test" of fairness should be whether every school offers the minimum quality education needed to acquire the skills needed to pass the test. If substantial numbers of students from each school manage to pass, it's pretty hard to argue that there is a problem.

There is a lot of grumbling about public education on FR. But there are few, if any schools in this country that are so bad as to not provide the instruction necessary to pass the kind of test we're talking about here. Especially given the number of times students are allowed to take it.