Well, this is a new twist on the exit exam scenario:
Florida's education chief does not like what he sees as a growing loophole in the state´s standardized graduation exam, allowing failing students to obtain diplomas from a private school in Lewiston, Maine. North Atlantic Regional High, a private school designed to assist home schoolers, is issuing diplomas to seniors who flunk the Florida test.
One of those who received her diploma from North Atlantic Regional is Stephania Fourron, who failed the reading portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. She came to Florida from Haiti two years ago.
For a $255 fee, North Atlantic Regional offered to accept her course credits and issue a diploma _ even though she has never attended classes there. Within weeks, Fourron was able to begin classes at Miami Dade College.
And will Fourron graduate from Miami Dade, when she's already demonstrated the inability to read English and do math at a 10th-grade level?
The school sounds mighty fishy, not least because its diplomas are allegedly legit in Florida - but not in Maine, where the "school" is based:
...a spokesman for the Maine Department of Education said the high school may be misleading students when it claims on its Internet site to "have the authority and privilege to grant high school diplomas in the State of Maine."
"The state of Maine does not recognize their grades, credits, transcripts or diplomas," said spokesman Edwin "Buzz" Kastuck. "If you´re home-schooling your children, you can issue them a diploma from your kitchen table _ we look at it the same way."
The school's administrators, Steve and Carol Moitozo, supposedly screens each student's academic accomplishments and converts them to a numerical scale, which is then compared against Maine's graduation requirements. If their total score is over that limit, the school issues a Maine high school diploma, despite the fact that the majority of the school's students live outside Maine. And it's supposed to be a place that provides assistance to homeschoolers, yet it appears to be issuing diplomas to kids in Florida's public school system who can't cut the mustard on the FCAT. Fishy, indeed.
Posted by kswygert at March 1, 2004 10:17 AM