Thousands of struggling high school seniors are likely to be denied a diploma after the state Supreme Court on Wednesday reinstated California's exit exam, a hotly debated gauge of competency in math and English.
Poor struggling babies. Does it not sound like the Times' writer is against the exit exam in what puports to be a news piece? I guess the fact that kids will have to demonstrate 8th grade proficiency in math and 10th grade proficiency in English is too much to ask our poor overworked kids, and the Times has their back.
Some government and school officials expressed praise for the Court's decision:
"The exit exam ensures that our schools are living up to their responsibility by giving our students the skills and the knowledge they need to succeed in college and in the workplace," Schwarzenegger said in a statement. "Postponement would have deprived us of the best tool we have to measure how well schools are doing their job."
Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Roy Romer echoed the governor, saying a "high school diploma has to represent some meaningful level of accomplishment."
Though Romer seems to support the exam, he announced that the students in his district who didn't pass the test will still be allowed to march on graduation day, provided they "promise" to take the test again this summer after completing a test prep course.
Given the low standards tested by this exam and the years the schools have had to prepare their students to pass, failure to pass the test is as much or more a failure of the school as it is the student. Maybe if there was some sort of financial penalty for the school district for each senior who fails to pass the exam, the schools would start doing their job and teaching kids the important stuff, instead of all the politically correct fluff that makes up way too much of the curriculum.
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