Judge is Failing Exit Exam

A couple of years ago California instituted a manadatory high school exit exam which must be successfully passed in order to get a diploma. The usual crowd screamed "inequality" and all that nonsense, but the test went forward and was to be used for the first time this year. Just to show you how difficult the material is, my daughter took and passed the test...as a sophomore. At best it measures 8th grade level work.

However, in California you can always find one judge willing to go along with every numbskull idea, and the activists who don't want anybody held accountable for anything found him. It looks like he's going to throw out the test. The LA Times opines today:

IF HE BLOCKS THE STATE'S HIGH SCHOOL exit exam from taking effect this June, Judge Robert B. Freedman will be crippling one of the most helpful school reforms California has ever put into effect. Freedman, a Superior Court judge in Oakland, indicated in a temporary ruling Monday that because the quality of education is uneven from school to school, poor and minority students don't have an equal chance of passing the test, which requires knowledge of 8th-grade math and 9th- or 10th-grade English. He will issue a final ruling Friday.

It is true that conditions at many rural and inner-city schools need major improvement; too many are overcrowded and lack well-qualified teachers. But the exit exam has been a valuable incentive for pushing high schools to make these improvements — and more speedily than most other measures. The threat of missing out on a diploma has both schools and students working like never before. And the exit exam is accompanied by funding for remedial classes after school and on Saturdays.

Many students who are failing the English test — including some who filed suit — were not let down by their schools. But they may have weak command of the language because they arrived in this country only recently. Others wouldn't graduate anyway because they are failing other classes as well.

Should Freedman demand a fully equal public education system before the exam can count, he will be sacrificing the good that the exam is accomplishing for a return to the abysmal status quo that prevailed before the exam was required.It was a culture in which no one changed anything because no one had to. Teachers passed students who weren't grasping the material; students didn't attend remedial classes because they could get a diploma anyway; graduates entered the work world with a piece of paper but without the skills to get anywhere in that world.

At last count over 90% of seniors had successfully passed the test, and among those who haven't, there is a large percentage of kids who don't speak English, or don't speak it well enough to pass the test. Given the poor quality of education that most kids get when compared to other countries, the high school diploma doesn't mean a lot now in terms of actual skills or ability, but taking away the one program that seemed to be making some headway in challenging both students and schools is really dumb.