Judge Delays Ruling on Junking California’s High School Exit Exam

A day after indicating he was prepared to strike down California’s controversial high school exit exam, an Oakland judge reiterated his position Tuesday but delayed issuing a final ruling.

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Robert B. Freedman postponed his decision after lawyers for the state raised questions at a hearing about whether a temporary injunction against the test should apply to all students who have failed the exam or only to the handful who filed the lawsuit.

Freedman ordered the state to submit further arguments on the issue by this afternoon and said he would decide by Friday whether to ban the two-part test that students must pass to graduate.

On Monday, Freedman released a tentative ruling indicating that he was inclined to order the state to award diplomas to students who fail the exam but complete all other graduation requirements.

It is rare for judges to reverse themselves after making a tentative ruling.

Arturo Gonzalez, the San Francisco lawyer who filed the case on behalf of the group of students and their parents, dismissed the state’s arguments Tuesday as “a last-minute, desperate attempt” to keep the exam in place.

“The judge is simply being careful,” he said. “The state is wrong.”

Rick Miller, director of communications for state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell, acknowledged that Freedman appeared likely to follow through. “He certainly didn’t give any indication that he would change his mind,” said Miller, who was in court Tuesday.

Gonzalez and other critics have argued that poor and minority students in low-performing schools are at a disadvantage when it comes to passing the exam because of sub-par teachers and resources.

This year’s 12th-graders are the first class to face the testing requirement, which includes a section of eighth-grade-level math and one of ninth- and 10th-grade-level English. Students can take the test multiple times and are required to answer little more than half of the questions correctly.

About 47,000 students across the state have failed to pass one or both parts of the exit exam and are at risk of not graduating. It is unclear how many of them have completed all of their other graduation requirements.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, officials said, about 5,200 seniors must still pass the exam to graduate. But officials won’t know the final number until later this month, when the latest testing results are released.

O’Connell, who as a state senator wrote the law creating the test, reiterated the importance of the exam, calling it a “cornerstone of our accountability system” that is needed to ensure that students graduate with a basic level of knowledge.

O’Connell said the state would appeal the case immediately if Freedman blocked the test.