Most 9th-Graders Fail High School Exit Exam

Only about four in 10 ninth-graders--and just one-fourth of Latino and African American students--passed California’s high school exit exam in March when it was administered for the first time, the State Board of Education said Thursday.

Though the first test was taken voluntarily by freshmen, state officials and educators say the results spotlight severe educational weaknesses. The California test is aimed at measuring students’ competency against 10th-grade standards in reading and eighth-grade standards in math.

“The results are sobering,” said Delaine Eastin, the state superintendent in charge of public schools. “The reality is that some of our schools are not adequately preparing all students . . . to pass the exam. The data show that we have a great deal of work to do.”

Passing the exam, which in future years will be given in 10th grade, will become a graduation requirement with the class of 2004. Students will be denied a diploma if they fail to pass in seven more tries during their high school years.

To pass the 6 1/2-hour exam, students needed to get just 60% of the questions right on the reading portion and 55% on the math, under a recommendation from Eastin that was adopted Thursday by the state board.

Eastin and other state education officials attempted to temper disappointment over the results by noting that the test covers subjects that several other states have deemed too challenging for their tests, including statistics and algebra.

The low passing rates are a “direct consequence of the fact that California has the most challenging [academic] standards in the country and the most challenging high school exit exam,” said Reed Hastings, president of the State Board of Education.

“It’s distressing to see how poorly they score. But these are ninth-graders, and this is an exit exam,” said state Assemblywoman Virginia Strom-Martin (D-Duncan Mills), who heads the Assembly Education Committee.

California joins a bevy of states that have found it tough to implement this sort of high-stakes exam.

In Arizona, for example, a mere 15% of students passed the math portion and 33% passed the writing portion when the state first administered its exit exam. New York was forced to lower the passing score on its graduation test to avoid unacceptably high failure rates. In Texas, 67% of African Americans and 59% of Latino students failed an initial test.

Eastin backed off a proposal of a 100-member advisory panel of teachers, administrators, parents and businesspeople to set the passing score at 70%.

At that level, “less than 1% of kids in the lowest [fifth of] schools would pass the math test and 15% would pass the English language arts portion,” Eastin said. “That’s not politically acceptable.”

Strom-Martin said the lower scores of Latinos and blacks demonstrate the importance of sticking with efforts to focus more resources on underperforming schools in poor areas.

Under the passing levels set Thursday, only 32% of students in the state’s lowest-performing schools passed the English test, and just 8% passed the math test. Whites and Asians were far more likely to pass English and, especially, math. Many schools, particularly in low-income areas, have yet to get instructors up to speed or acquire textbooks geared to the new standards.

An estimated 390,000, or 81%, of this year’s ninth-graders, volunteered to take the two-part exam this spring. As of Thursday, said John Mockler, executive director of the State Board of Education, about 155,000 of them have passed and will not have to take the test again. Students who passed one portion of the test will not have to take it again.

One reason the state gave the high school exit exam to ninth-graders was “to find out which students have not gotten their due rights to an adequate education” so that policymakers can focus on improving those schools, Hastings said.

Board members say they intend to raise the passing score in future years.

“The public needs to realize that this is a work in progress,” Strom-Martin said. “We have a long-range plan for bringing our kids up to speed. We know what the problems are, and we’re trying to focus on those.”