High school exit exams in California
This "little test" now determines graduation in California. My thoughts? I wonder just how useful an exam is when you only need to score 54 percent on the math section and 75 percent on the English section to pass. Is the test that hard, or has the passing rate been dumbed down far enough to satisfy anti-testing activists? If so, why give a test? Especially considering that students get a total of seven attempts before graduation.
Interesting information from the district testing coordinator Mark Frazier:
Countywide, students passed the 2001 testing at a rate of 47 percent in math and 67 percent in English, with statewide scores of 44 and 64 percent respectively. "We're still in the learning phase of this test," Frazier said. "Right now students only need 55 percent correct in math and 60 percent correct in English to pass. That will certainly change as the test evolves."
Well, I certainly hope so.
The politics and psychometrics of high school exit exams are tricky, and I can't say I'd ever work on one if given the chance. At the heart of it, there seems to be fundamental disagreement within the school system about what the exit exams are supposed to measure, and such disagreement always bodes ill for the exam itself. On the surface, it seems like a simple question - the exams should measure how well the kid has been educated in high school.
But at what level? Should the test be set so that college-bound students will find it easy to pass, and others might have to re-take it? Should it be set so low that even students who don't plan to attend college will pass it, thus removing any diagnostic potential from the test for the college-bound students?
Can kids with a high SAT and AP courses under their belts opt out of the exam, on the grounds that they've already demonstrated their achievements? New York and Virginia have already implemented such plans. Will some parents interpret this as "discrimination" if their youngsters don't do well on the SAT?
What happens if different minority groups pass at different rates? Will a separate scoring be used for different groups, much like SAT scores are weighted differently in college admissions, so that a member of one group needs a lower or higher score to graduate than a member of another group? That's not inconsistent with the direction in which college admissions are moving, you know. Does it make sense to hold all the students to the same standards for exit exams, when minority students are often admitted to colleges with lower SAT scores than white students?
What is not helpful to this discussion are the comments from testing critics:
Critics contend, however, that the tests will place too much pressure on students which could lead to higher dropout rates by placing too much importance on single imperfect areas of academia, with no assurance that the students will have had the opportunity to learn the material being tested.
Yeah, right. Define "too much pressure". Convince me that a student with no intention of dropping out will do so when faced with a test that allows seven attempts and requires them to get only half of the math items correct. Explain to me what you mean by "single imperfect areas of academia", since the areas of math and verbal skills seem broad enough to cover a great deal of what we consider "education", and no test is perfect anyway. And "no assurance that the students will have had the opportunity to learn the material being tested"? The exit exams measure what math and verbal skills students learn in high school, so if they take any math and English classes in high school, they will have had the opportunity to learn the material. The way this criticism is worded, you'd think the exam questions cover AP-level course material and esoteric subjects. It's basic math and English skills, people. If some students in California don't have the opportunity to learn these at any point in their entire high school career, don't tell me the problem is with the tests.