"To the cheers of dozens of students"
The Los Angeles school board voted on April 9 to "explore" establishing a moratorium on the high school exit exam currently operational for LA's seniors (I posted about this previously). This isn't the same as explicitly allowing schools to graduate students who fail the exam, but it's a step in that direction:
To the cheers of dozens of students and parents who are fighting to overturn the California High School Exit Exam as a graduation requirement, the Los Angeles school board voted Tuesday to explore establishing a moratorium on the high-stakes test.
The board came short of making a commitment to issue diplomas to students who fail the test in defiance of state law, although board member Genethia Hudley Hayes suggested the idea and said she personally would support such civil disobedience.
Even if this is the right decision, it's being made for the wrong reason:
The Coalition for Educational Justice, which led the campaign for a moratorium on the exit exam, asserts the test is "racist" and "class-biased," noting that 72 percent of African Americans and 70 percent of Latino Americans throughout the state failed the test in the spring of 2002.
Translation: "The schools are failing record numbers of these students, but it's easier for us to give them a diploma than make substantive changes that would improve their skills." Think I'm being cynical? Look at the exam specifics here. The exam is targeted to 10th-grade standards, students need only a 55% correct to pass on math and 60% correct to pass on English, and schools must supply tutorials to students who fail. What's more, students are allowed eight attempts to pass this exam. And 72% of Los Angeles's African American students cannot satisfy these lax requirements. In this light, it's obvious that this moratorium is a desperate attempt to hide the fact that the schools are performing miserably, that students are performing miserably, and that Los Angeles schools would like to graduate students who cannot read at the 10th-grade level.
But hey, as long as the students are cheering, who cares if they can read?