Posted on 06/01/2006 8:23:59 PM PDT by SmithL
SACRAMENTO - In an 11th-hour victory, 4,542 high school seniors will be allowed to graduate with their class this month because -- at last -- they passed California's controversial exit exam in March, the latest test results show.
The newly victorious bring the total to 394,794 students in the Class of 2006, or about 90 percent, who have passed the graduation test required by the state for the first time this year. Still, 41,758 seniors have not yet passed the test of 8th- to 10th-grade math and English skills.
What remains unclear is how many of those 41,758 seniors, who represent 10 percent of this year's class, would be eligible to graduate even if the exit exam were not required.
But last year, 9 percent of seniors failed to earn a diploma even though the exit exam was not a graduation requirement.
"We must focus now on doing everything possible for those students whose graduation must be postponed because they have not yet mastered the skills in English and math that they will need to succeed past high school," said state Superintendent Jack O'Connell, who wrote the exit exam law in 1999 when he was a state senator.
In February, a San Francisco law firm sued O'Connell on behalf of all students who would be denied a diploma solely for failing the exit exam.
Attorney Arturo Gonzalez of Morrison & Foerster asked that the exam be halted immediately on grounds that low-income students of color had less of an opportunity to learn the material on the exam because their schools were substandard.
Of this year's seniors who have not yet passed the test, 64 percent are Latinos, many of whom speak little English.
Low-income seniors also are struggling: 61 percent of those who haven't passed are poor.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Study or Sue?
Sue or Study?
So many hard choices, but it looks like the folks that studied made the right choice.
Or maybe a bit of creative grading.
Ha! I read the title and my first thought was of a bunch of elderly people going back to school. I can be a real dunce sometimes! Wonder if I could pass that test!!
Isn't that enough of a reason since it sounds as if they have failed it at least twice. That's a bad sign.
DEfining education down. Dumbing down graduates is a facade to hide the real problem.
Of those, how many are legal citizens?
"Still, 41,758 seniors have not yet passed the test of 8th- to 10th-grade math and English skills."
One has to wonder how a person can have become a high school senior if he is unable to pass tests of 8th to 10th grade math and English skills.
Our tax dollars at work:
1: Providing barely functional education (at public expense) to
2: Illegals (not all, there are obviously some "unteachables" in every sector of society plus legal and illegal children who "just got here" so they have no command over English) so they can
3: be cared for, coddled, given special treatment (at public expense)
4: so that many more (remedial) teachers and support staff can be hired (at public expense) to populate
5: an ever-enlarging dependent class(es) who will require welfare or assistance (at public expense) to get by
But at least we'll have folks who'll do the jobs Americans won't do. (at public expense)
Galls me.
Good job to those who decided to study instead of sue. As for the others...
California Exit Exam:
1+1 = 3
When they finally do away with these pesky, "controversial" exams, I'm going to quit my job and become a brain surgeon or maybe a lawyer, they make a lot of money. Or maybe I'll be a rocket scientist. Right now, the only thing standing in my way are those wacky, "controversial" exams. Those exams are racist you know.
Give these 'graduates' the same -- the VERY same -- test in 6 weeks' time and have the results graded by any independent company/group/firm that does this sort of thing, and we will all find out straightaway that 95-98% of them were slid through the system.
That was my thought, as well.
Agree. I have no sympathy for whiners who can't do simple math and can't use English at the level of punctuation and plurals. The number of freepers who can't understand they're, their, there is also appalling.
"The number of freepers who can't understand they're, their, there is also appalling."
Their, their, just calm down, old man. I can tell your old becuase you ovioulsy gradyuated from skool when it was still teching speling and gramer.
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