<i> Trying to Make Sense of Exit Exam Results

Think of these as the kind of math and language problems our ninth-graders are expected to encounter on the state’s new high school exit exam:

On their first try, 34% of ninth-graders pass the test. An additional 10% pass only the math portion. Another 30% pass only language arts. How many students will have to take the test again next year?

Explain in an essay what the passage rate says about the performance of students and our state’s public schools.

Do we wring our hands because only one-third of ninth-graders tested passed both the math and language portions of our state’s new high school exit exam?

Or do we celebrate the fact that, with three years to go before graduation, so many students have already mastered the concepts a high school graduate is required to know?

The news out of Sacramento last week was greeted with alarm in some circles, optimism in others and confusion by many of the rest of us: Thirty-four percent of the ninth-graders who took California’s new High School Exit Exam last spring scored passing grades.

This is the first class that will be required to pass the test by their senior year in order to graduate. So the fact that so many have already accomplished that in ninth grade is good, right? Only if you don’t consider the fact that the test is based on what students should learn in eighth grade.

That’s not as dumb as it sounds. California has a new eighth-grade curriculum that is considered among the toughest in the nation, with a heavy focus on critical thinking and math skills, such as algebra. But those standards were adopted just a few years ago, and many districts are only just now training teachers and getting the textbooks and other materials they need. So, many ninth-graders who took the exam last spring were tested on things they had not yet been taught.

“The test is, to some degree, a change in what kids are expected to do,” says Mary Perry, deputy director of EdSource, a nonprofit education research group in Palo Alto. “But more importantly, it sets a higher minimum expectation for all students, not just those we typically think of as college-bound.”

Those ninth-graders who passed the test last spring? “They are probably the kids who have been aimed at four-year colleges all their lives,” Perry said.

The other two-thirds? They have nine chances to pass it between now and graduation, and many schools are scrambling to hire reading and math coaches, lengthen the school day and offer tutoring and extra classes to bring them along. The goal is to get these kids ready for college too.

“Up until the last few years, our public school system has not been expected to bring all kids up to the level where they would be able to move on to higher education, “ Perry says.

“We allowed some children to be left behind. Now we’re asking, what has to change to help all kids be successful? And raising expectations

To some, the very notion of an exit exam is controversial. Should children advance for 12 years and earn good enough grades to pass all their courses and then be held hostage at graduation by a standardized test? Others counter that graduation exams are a good idea, but these tests are too little, too late.

Perry says we ought to think of the test as an entrance, rather than exit, exam--one that measures whether a child is ready for the kind of academic challenges that lead not just to college, but to success in an increasingly sophisticated world. “If you want the best for your kids, part of what you want is for them to have the option of high-paying, meaningful employment,” Perry says. “And what this new system is telling you is, if they can’t pass this test, they might not have that choice.”

It is intended not as a bar to graduation, but as a measuring stick, and its results should leave us both hopeful and resolute. College as a possibility for every student may seem unrealistic, but aiming for less is unfair to all of us.