Posted on 05/24/2006 12:59:06 PM PDT by SmithL
San Francisco -- The California Supreme Court has reinstated the state exit exam as a graduation requirement
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Racist bastards! /s
Yeah. This test must be stopped: it's racist, sexist, and discriminates against stupid people.
he California Supreme Court today reinstated the state's high school exit exam as a graduation requirement.
It also ordered a lower court to hear the case.
The court granted state schools chief Jack O'Connell's request for a stay of a preliminary injunction that had suspended the exam.
The panel also sent the case to the state Court of Appeal for further action.
Court spokeswoman Lynn Holton said the high court's action means the injunction is no longer in effect and the exit exam requirement is reinstated until the Court of Appeal takes further action.
YAAAY!!!! Our guys finally win one!
Another Activist Judge smacked down!
These tests disciminate against lazy idiots.
When is graduation day for most CA public schools. Next week probably?
Good. Now go home and study ya lazy slackers.
i took the Regents exams in NY State in 1965.
our grade was 1/2 based on the total of the course work for the year, including homework, quizzes and tests...and 1/2 was the Regents. no matter what, though, that score was posted, and you did not pass if you did not pass the Regents.
Is it too late to buy stock in the company that makes the GED tests?
Good!
I thought they had nine or ten chances to pass, and that the threshold for passing is near (but not necessarily above) 50%.
If the test is multiple choice with only five or so choices, then it's not difficult to pass simply by guessing.
O'Connell is up for reelection this year for the nonpartisan office of State Superintendant of Schools. I don't know anything about his competitors.
I'm glad he wanted to keep the exam. No matter how easy it is, at least there's now some standard for HS graduation in this state.
But, I had the impression he was liberal on other issues, so I don't know for whom to vote.
oops
I wonder if there are spelink questions on the test?
The state Supreme Court voted this morning to reinstate the exit exam, striking down a lower court's ruling that threw out the requirement for this school year.
As a result, thousands of seniors in the Class of 2006 who expected to earn a diploma as of last week have lost their chance to graduate with their class.
The high court also decided against hearing an appeal to the original ruling and sent it to the state Court of Appeal in San Francisco.
No statewide estimate exists for how many seniors failed the test but have enough credits to graduate. However, the reversal of fortune means that at least 160 students in the 32,000-student West Contra Costa school district will be denied their diplomas because they flunked the exam.
The Legislature approved the test in 1999 as a means to provide a baseline of achievement among graduates. The test measures mastery of sophomore English and middle school-level math through algebra.
Nearly 47,000 seniors, or 11 percent of the class of 2006, have failed the test. The figure does not including special education students, who earned a reprieve from the test earlier this year.
A group of students, including five from Richmond High School in the West Contra Costa school district, sued the state in February claiming that the test unfairly discriminated against poor and minority students found in a prior lawsuit to have limited access to qualified teachers and adequate supplies.
On May 12, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Robert Freedman sided with students and threw out the exit exam as a graduation requirement for this year.
Freedman wrote in granting a preliminary injunction that denying students diplomas would cause significant damage.
The suit asserted $20 million in state money aimed at tutoring for students who failed the test was unfairly distributed. According to the complaint, 166 districts with failing students received none of the money.
Judge Freedman called this argument the most significant.
"Plaintiffs are likely to prevail on their claim that the State's arbitrary distribution of the $20 million allocated for remediation purposes constitutes an additional violation of the equal protection clause."
Source: http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/14650224.htm
bump
" More and more states are requiring students to pass a standardized test as a condition of getting a high school diploma, and the complaints are flying fast and thick. These tests are unfair, the grumblers grumble. They ask irrelevant questions, the fumers fume. They subvert regular lessons. They force educators to teach to the test. They aren't good yardsticks of what students really know. They're racist."
...
"Consider, for instance, what students in California's Central Valley Were once expected to know. Here are some questions from the history portion of the 1914 Kern County High School test. These were not multiple choice; students had to write short essays, not fill in a circle with a No. 2 pencil. (Some questions in this column have been condensed or edited for clarity.)
• Give an account of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
• Connect these names with US history: Captain Perry, Robert Fulton, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Lafayette, General Pickett.
• Give an account of the causes of the Civil War. Name four battles and the opposing generals in each.
• Tell all you can of the events of the McKinley Administration.
• Give a brief account of the construction of the Panama Canal.
• Explain the effects of the European War [the first phase of World War I] on the commerce of the US. On the revenue of the US. What remedies have been applied?
As kids are the same in every era, no doubt there were plenty in 1914 who resented having to master such "ridiculous" and "byzantine" details. What employer, some must have muttered, is ever going to ask me about the Panama Canal?"
...
"Are you amazed that high school graduates a century ago could handle questions like the ones in this column? Actually, they could handle far more. You see, the questions you've just read were all from tests to get into high school. They were tests, in other words, of what the educated 8th-grader was presumed to have mastered."
http://216.247.220.66/jacoby/2000/jj06-26-00.htm
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