A balanced article about exit exams in Alaska contains this odd quote:
This is the second year the exit exam has tripped some seniors' walk down the graduation aisle. Students in Alaska started taking the exam six years ago. But passing all three portions has only been a requirement for graduation for two years. Students first take the exam in the spring of their sophomore year. There are no time limits, and they may re-take it as many times as necessary in order to pass. It is administered twice a year.In April, some schools reported students taking more than 10 hours to complete the exit exam. Palmer High School principal Wolfgang Winter said at the time that he saw the lengthy test times as a measure of how seriously students were taking them.
Emphases mine. Are you kidding me? Does Winter seriously think that it's a good sign that some students took more than 10 hours to complete an exit exam? I've been all over the web and can't find the item count, but it's hard to imagine that the math and readings sections contain more than 100 items each, tops, or that the writing section contains more than a handful of prompts. Those marathons sounds more like a cry for help to me.
On a related topic, Alaska's DOE website has a nifty list of the exit exams across all the states that use them.
Posted by kswygert at June 15, 2005 10:51 AM