Davis’ Plan for a Graduation Test Is Full of Risks

Gov. Gray Davis’ proposal last week to require California high school students beginning in 2003 to pass an exit exam as tough as any in America was applauded by Republicans and Democrats alike.

Despite that warm reception, the idea is by far the riskiest part of his education agenda, one that could trigger a backlash if too many students fail.

Pass and you are a high school graduate in good standing, able to go off to work or college, diploma in hand. Fail and your chances of entering the economic mainstream are slim.

Across the country, about half the states either have or will soon have graduation tests. But most measure skills typically learned in the eighth or ninth grade.

Davis, however, wants to tie the test in California to the state’s academic standards. Those standards--just adopted in the past 14 months--are among the most ambitious in the country.

The language arts standards, for example, expect high school seniors to be sophisticated literary critics--able to “analyze the political assumptions” of historical essays and the cultural forces shaping novels. In math, the administration’s plan is for the test to gauge whether graduates have mastered algebra and geometry. Then there’s science and social studies.

Lorraine McDonnell, a UC Santa Barbara professor who researches the politics of testing, said that even her graduate students are challenged by the civics topics in the social studies standards. “I can’t imagine even if you are an incredibly skilled teacher being able to get all of this in,” McDonnell said.

The strongest argument in favor of the test is the idea of linking it to the standards. Now, the standards “don’t have a lot of authority,” McDonnell said. That’s because they are voluntary and some districts, including Long Beach, Los Angeles and Pasadena, have chosen different ones.

A test based on the state’s standards would change that, McDonnell said. The exit exams would drive the whole system.

In addition, such a test would make students and their parents--not just educators--accountable. Presumably, parents would push their kids harder to do homework and go to school every day. The point of setting the bar high is to “catch people’s attention,” said Gary Hart, Davis’ education secretary.

At the same time, that’s also what makes the whole effort enormously risky politically.

First, McDonnell said, the state must make sure that all students have the “opportunity to learn” what they are to be tested on. That means ensuring that teachers are skilled, classrooms aren’t overcrowded, textbooks are adequate and so on.

If such conditions are not met, students denied a diploma could well have grounds for a lawsuit. Fear of such lawsuits prompted Arizona officials in November to delay for a year the state’s required graduation test. Many teachers there have not even read the standards.

Second, it’s likely that large numbers of minority students and students in urban areas--where Davis, a Democrat, has strong support--would fail at first. Among current eighth-graders--the first class to be affected--only 7% of the students not fluent in English scored at the national average on a reading test last spring. Davis’ test would be far harder.

That also could spark protests. Texas’ graduation test is being challenged in court because minority students are more likely to fail. Nevada and Arkansas have each canceled tests that proved too difficult. And now some in Virginia question the legitimacy of a new standards-based test that 97% of the schools flunked.

In Florida last week, the state and Gov. Jeb Bush were sued by parents whose kids attend schools where as many as three-quarters of the students failed a standardized exam. The failure rate proved that the state had shortchanged the students educationally, the plaintiffs’ attorneys argue.

Similar legal and political fireworks can be expected in California if Davis gets his way for an exit exam.