Don’t Flunk This Test

Three out of four ninth-graders in Los Angeles public schools failed the math section on California’s new high school exit exam. According to results released Wednesday, most also flunked the English section, and earlier this year the Stanford 9 tests demonstrated a lack of progress in the upper grades. This deplorable showing should prompt Supt. Roy Romer to give teachers’ and principals’ unions an ultimatum: Raise the scores or get ready to rumble.

Romer knows how to raise these scores: Kick out lousy principals and untie the hands of strong ones, who need the authority to assign the best teachers to the weakest students and to quickly get rid of those teachers who deserve dunce caps. But such improvements would require changes in union contracts.

The superintendent admits that neither droves of good teachers nor good principals are lining up to join the LAUSD, so he wants to help those who are on the job today become better. He prescribes more training for principals and coaching for ineffective teachers, although finding coaches to help teachers teach math will prove tough.

Under Romer’s plan, every secondary teacher would teach reading to those many older students who are years behind--and they would do it in history courses, science courses and even math courses. That’s not what upper-grade teachers were hired to do, nor is it what many want to do, as the union will undoubtedly point out. Romer believes they should have no choice. Students who attend L.A. public schools generally do better in math than in English because English is a second language for so many. Yet this time, more students failed math than English. Romer blames the failure on a mismatch that allowed most students to be tested on algebra before they had studied it. Eighth-grade students now are required to take this vital subject. That’s good, but the district still needs to figure out how to teach the value of X to those who already failed the exit test.

Students have nine opportunities to pass the mandatory exit exam, starting in their freshman year and ending after they have completed high school. Those who fail will graduate without a diploma.

Failure is no longer without consequence for schools either. Sacramento has threatened to take over schools whose students continue to do poorly on the Stanford 9 test. The state this week named the first 13 schools to be under its scrutiny. Ten are in the LAUSD. If they don’t improve in 18 months, the state will transfer students to another district, replace teachers and principals or remove the schools from the district’s jurisdiction.

Now the unions must decide whether this is a test they’re willing to let the Los Angeles Unified School District flunk.