Questions Raised on Graduation Test

Four months before California high schools must administer a new graduation exam, serious questions are being raised about the length and difficulty of the test.

At a meeting Wednesday in Sacramento, the high school exit exam advisory committee discussed whether to drop some multiple-choice items from the 200-question test.

Many schools have complained that it will be tough to crowd the six-hour exam into an already busy spring testing season.

Another issue that came up for lively discussion was when the state should decide what score would represent a passing grade on the exam. The state had planned to determine that level next spring, after the current crop of freshmen take the test on a voluntary basis.

But after hearing from legal experts and statisticians, the panel realized that a more accurate score could be set if the state waited until next year’s 10th-graders completed the exam, which at that point would be mandatory. The test is supposed to be geared to a 10th-grade level.

Waiting until after the 2002 testing, however, would violate the state law that created the exit exam. Under that law, members of the Class of 2004 are supposed to have their first chance to pass the new exam in spring 2001, as freshmen. If the state postpones establishment of the passing mark, that would mean that next spring’s test would amount to a practice test.

Beginning in 2004, students who have not passed the test at some point during their high school years will not get a diploma. In addition to multiple-choice questions, the exam will have two questions that require written answers.

Students will have many chances to pass the test, but each time they would face a substantially new version.

The graduation test is the centerpiece of Gov. Gray Davis’ efforts to boost the lackluster academic performance of the state’s students.

Davis in the past has insisted that the exit exam be rigorous, with a heavy dose of algebra items.

James R. Brown, an advisory committee co-chairman and superintendent of the Glendale Unified School District, said that many panel members favor keeping the test at its current length but tacking on a Saturday or a weekday to the school calendar so that classroom time would not be lost. The state Department of Finance estimated that an additional day of school for one grade statewide would cost $16 million.

Another proposal is to reduce the number of questions that address certain state standards.

The California Department of Education, meanwhile, has floated a suggestion that the test could be winnowed down by dropping some of the toughest algebra questions. More difficult questions could be added in future years, once schools have had time to revamp lesson plans to better teach the more challenging material, said Bob Anderson, a department official.

Brown said the panel will submit all three proposals to the State Board of Education. The board will be under pressure to decide the issue at its meeting next Thursday, to provide the test publisher as much time as possible to make revisions before the March testing period. The test is being developed by American Institutes for Research in Palo Alto.

Independent evaluators and many educators have expressed concern that the state is barreling forward with the high-stakes exam without allowing enough time for students to learn the challenging material required by California’s relatively new academic standards.

Lisa Reed, a math teacher from Crescenta Valley High School in La Crescenta, told the panel that students at her academically strong high school did not fare well on 21 sample math questions provided by the state Department of Education on its Web site, https://www.cde.ca.gov.

The 300 ninth- and 10th-grade geometry students who participated in the trial run, most of whom had already taken algebra, “felt very overwhelmed by it,” she said in an interview Thursday. Only 7% of the students got 70% or more of the items correct.

No provisions have yet been made for how the state would deal with the potentially substantial number of students who do not make the grade each year.