Exit Exam Puts the Flaws of Educational Politics to the Test

I’m in a high school auditorium, among students in mortarboards and polyester gowns. The music rises, triumphant -- “Land of Hope and Glory,” known this time of year as “Pomp and Circumstance.” I step up to the lectern.

“My fellow high school graduates of the class of 11 a.m., June 2, 2003: Before we leave this place of learning and embark on the adventure called life, I am honored to be able to congratulate you on your graduation -- both of you.

“There are only three of us graduating today because our other classmates failed the high school exit exam, even though it’s pass-fail, and to pass you only had to get 55% on the math part and 60% on English language arts.

“So as you go on to college and out into the world, and you encounter your former classmates as they go about their new professions, be sure to smile and ask how they are, and leave a nice tip.”

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That notorious California high school exit exam, the one that students may soon have to pass to graduate -- I took it the other day.

What I took was the sample test on a Web site. Of the multiple-choice language usage and comprehensive questions, I missed one -- personally, I don’t think of it as an error; I think of it as an artistic disagreement over a period versus a semicolon. Of the 60 math questions, I missed eight. (That’s why I write for a living.)

With those scores, I would have passed handily, unlike a worrying percentage of the state’s high school students -- a 40% failure rate on the math section in next year’s class. That’s why the state Board of Education will consider next month whether it should postpone for another year the pass-this-test-or-don’t-graduate standard.

Flip around that barroom retort, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”

If America is so rich, why aren’t we smart? Why can’t we graduate students who can do percentages, figure out the meaning of a few paragraphs and have a clue how their own government operates?

And why can’t anybody figure out how to figure out whether kids are learning anything in school?

The prospect of the test sent students and parents swarming out to picket high schools and chant, “Hey hey, ho ho, exit exams have got to go.” (At least they have a grasp of the jingle.)

An angry Crenshaw High teacher challenged the “racist diploma penalty” of the exit exam. The legitimate concern is that kids in poor neighborhoods and poor schools -- most of them minorities -- get stiffed when it comes to top teachers and textbooks, and even working toilets, and that shows in test results. Critics are right: Not all schools are created equal, though they should be. And no school can guarantee that a student goes home to a quiet place to study, without the TV blaring, to a grown-up telling him to do his homework before he plays video games, to a decent dinner.

Not all students are created equal, and neither are the tests. But that’s hardly a reason to get rid of tests, or of standards. Tests should gauge the quality of the schools as much as the competence of the students. Better to find out at 16 that you need to work on your basic math or reading, than to wake up at 40 and realize that you’re getting taken to the cleaners by your credit card interest rate, or that you still having trouble reading TV Guide.

Like the rest of us, students get constantly hammered about living in an “information economy.” How can you make it in an information economy if you’re incapable of imparting information? Athletes and pop singers often end a sentence with, “You know what I mean?” No, I don’t. Be clear, and I will. “Here” doesn’t mean “there,” “Calvary” is not the same as “cavalry,” and “flaunt” is not “flout,” any more than four equals five.

A diploma should mean something other than warming a seat for four years -- and a proper test should be able to find that out. As L.A. school board member Genethia Hudley-Hayes pointed out in voting against the exam, you can’t test for something that hasn’t been taught.

And oh my, what isn’t being taught. The risk I found in taking this test wasn’t failing; it was falling asleep. Outside of excerpts of Jack London, Maya Angelou and Edna St. Vincent Millay, the essays were boring, dreary, passive prose. No wonder kids don’t want to read if this is what reading looks like to them.

Educational politics cheat students out of the color and life of education, the swash and buckle of the human story. No matter what it starts out as -- the red meat of history, the piquant sauce of poetry, the sweet finishing of music or art -- education gets blenderized into bland, baby-food education.

The left is afraid of any -ist language. Educator Diane Ravitch, in her book “The Language Police,” notes that a story about a blind man climbing an icy slope was cut from a textbook: Can’t imply that blind people could find life tougher than people with sight. Can’t even say “blind.” Can’t write about things students might not have seen, like snow, or oceans, lest they feel ignorant. Earth to the classroom: I never saw a yacht, or 19th century London, or a saguaro as a kid -- but I knew what they were.... I could read books. QED.

And the right is afraid of anything remotely critical of the mythic America of the chopped cherry tree and manifest destiny, or anything mystic or supernatural. Arthur Miller, Harry Potter, Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- stay home.

Houghton Mifflin has published a list of the 100 words every high school student should know. Antebellum, chromosome, hypotenuse, gerrymander, laissez faire, photosynthesis, suffragist -- these are words that show the student has learned something about government, math, biology, history and economics.

The state Board of Education should have a look at this list. Forget the exit exam. If California’s seniors understood three-quarters of these words, the state could congratulate itself on a job well done.

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Back to that sample exam I took. Yes, I missed one in the language part, but I also found some mistakes, like these: “Music from summer jazz festivals drift over the communities” -- it’s drifts, not drift. The music drifts, not the festivals. “Every day” was one word when it should have been two. And a misplaced modifier: “As a volunteer pet-aid, we ask you ... “

I think I should get extra points for that, don’t you? It’ll make up for my mentioning “Pomp and Circumstance,” music composed by a dead white Anglo-European male.

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Patt Morrison’s columns appear Mondays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is patt. morrison@latimes.com.