Now Arizona's youngsters will be facing the same "plight" as students in other states:
Thousands of Arizona high-schoolers risk not graduating in 2006, facing a plight similar to that of other students in states with high-stakes tests. Conservative state projections estimate that nearly five thousand Arizona seniors -- or about 10 percent -- will fail the AIMS test in 2006.
So that means that 10% of Arizona's students might not be smart/focused enough to earn a diploma. Call me a cynic, but that doesn't sound like an incredibly large number. The 2002 Census Report on Educational Attainment in the US gives the numbers as 84% of all citizens over age 25 having a high school diploma; the number rises to 88% when you count only those between the ages of 25 and 29. Arizona's graduation rate with the current estimate would be 90% of their senior class.
I know, I'm not counting dropouts here, and I'm sure there are those who believe that any student who makes it to senior year should receive a diploma. But certainly some kids make it that far without having advanced skills, and perhaps they really can't learn or demonstrate those skills in that last year. I'm not saying Arizona shouldn't be concerned about that 10%; the schools should find ways to help those students graduate if, in fact, they're not learning the material in the first place due to bad or inefficient teaching. But if they think the failure rate is too high, why assume it's the "plight" of the test?
"This is the political hot potato because nobody wants to be known as the person that costs kids their diplomas," said Keith Gayler of the Center for Education Policy, a nonprofit group that advocates for public education.
Actually, wouldn't that "person" always be either the teacher, or the student, regardless of whether exit exams are in place?
The Center for Education Policy reviewed all state exit exams and found Arizona's and New York's tests among the toughest, The Arizona Republic reported Sunday. "I heard it was hard," said Derrick Riggs, a Chandler High School sophomore. "It's also kind of scary because you have to pass the three parts to graduate. What if I keep failing one part and don't graduate?"
Why are these kids so scared? It's a test of high-school-level material, not boot camp. My guess is these kids are reading all the hysterical comments from teachers and testing opponents and they believe the state is out to deprive them all of their rightful diplomas. Don't kids have to take tests to pass classes in the first place?
And the statement that Arizona's exit exam might be one of the toughest exit exams around is like saying that Heidi Klum is one of the ugliest Victoria's Secret models. The Arizona exam could be the toughest exit exam and still be pretty easy.
Arizona launched AIMS in 2000, but has twice postponed the graduation requirement after debates about low scores and initial problems with content and scoring...Discontentment over poor performance is leading some states to consider alternative measures, such as waivers, exemptions and alternate test scores, so students can graduate.
I have a better idea - get rid of the tests. States that aren't going to stand behind the exams, and accept the fact that some students will flunk them, shouldn't use them. That way, there aren't all these "alternative measures" to keep track of, each of which comes with its own pitfall anyway. Want to use the SAT as an alternate measure? What about all those cries of bias on the SAT? You can be sure that some activist groups will say the SAT is just as problematic (except when, illogically, the SAT gets a pass so that other exams can be criticized).
Granted, removing the exit exam doesn't do anything to help solve the problem of high school graduates who cannot read, write, or do basic math, but at least the school administrators won't have the anxiety of dealing with (horrors!) a student who can't pass a basic skills exam.
"[Arizona students] have to pass a reasonable test to graduate," said Tom Horne, state superintendent of public instruction. "Doing a class project or something along those lines will not be allowed."
Well, that's reassuring. Makes you wonder who floated the class project idea in the first place.
Civil rights lawsuits have been filed in Massachusetts, Michigan and other states on behalf of poor, minority or special-needs students, whose failure rates on the tests can be two to three times higher than those of other students.
Let's hope those lawsuits are against the school for reasons of quality, rather than for the existence of the exams themselves. After all, it's not the exams that cheated those kids out of a decent education.
Parents also question why a student who did well on the SAT or ACT should be denied a diploma for not passing the state's standardized test. "As a parent, you can't help but worry when you hear of kids that do well on their SATs, but fail their exit exam," said John DeCamp, whose son attends Dobson High School in Mesa. "That's a red flag. Maybe the exit exams are too difficult.
Or maybe those anecdotes are only one or two exceptions in a sea of adherences to the rule. I'd like to see the correlation between the exit exam scores and SAT/ACT scores. Granted, the tests measure different things, so you wouldn't expect to see even a high correlation, necessarily. But you'd hope to not see a negative correlation, and if there are indeed high percentages of students who do well on college entrance exams but poorly on the exit exams, that would be cause for worry. The statements by these parents are not, in my mind, strong enough to be cause for worry.
In other words, let's examine the data before we decide whether this exam is really too hard, okay?
Posted by kswygert at December 2, 2003 02:39 PM