High School Exit Exam Faces Delay

California’s high school exit exam, once heralded as a sure-fire way to ratchet up achievement and make a diploma worthwhile, will be postponed amid concerns about high failure rates and the political and legal backlash from denying thousands of students the right to graduate next year.

A majority of the members of the California Board of Education said they would vote next month to delay what was one of Gov. Gray Davis’ central education reforms. By pushing back the requirement for passing the exam at least two years to the Class of 2006, board members said they would give students more opportunity to master the necessary English and math skills.

The test’s original intent was to hold individual students accountable. But that goal has given way to a mixture of politics, ethnic anger and real concerns about the quality of education offered to students who have been repeatedly unable to pass the test -- even though it is geared to a ninth-grade level in math and a 10th-grade level in English.

The state’s budget problems also have contributed to the situation as Davis conceded he has been too preoccupied with money worries to focus on sticking to the exam’s original schedule.

Facing strong protests against exit exams, education reformers in California and other states such as Florida, Arizona and Alaska have been taught their own new lesson: It is one thing to publicize schools’ bad test scores or to remove a principal at a failing campus, but an altogether tougher step to tell students and parents that passing four years of classes is not good enough to earn a high school diploma.

As the California board vote approaches, several education organizations and civil rights groups are lobbying to delay or drop the test.

Meanwhile, the Legislature already has taken up the issue on its own.

The state Assembly recently approved a bill to postpone the graduation requirement for two years and the state Senate is expected to take up the measure in a few weeks. Two lawsuits seeking testing accommodations for disabled students and a delay of the test are on hold, awaiting the state board’s action.

Education experts said postponing the exit exam would send a mixed -- some said disheartening -- message to schools that have been gearing up aggressively for it.

“It leads to more cynicism that this too shall pass, like a number of other California education reforms,” said Mike Kirst, a Stanford education professor and former president of the state education board who helped design the test. “You don’t have a clear end game here.”

However, Reed Hastings, the current education board president, called a two-year delay “smart policy.” Like other board members, Hastings is fearful of the state being entangled in a lengthy and expensive legal battle that could undermine the exam.

“We want to ensure that we can sustain the political and legal challenges,” he said.

Recognizing the inevitable postponement, state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell announced Friday that he was canceling July’s administration of the test, which was to be offered six times a year.

The nine-hour test, spread over two days, includes multiple-choice questions and essays.

The material covers English standards, such as reading comprehension, word analysis, writing structure and grammar. In math, concepts include fractions, probability, linear equations and basic geometry.

Students have been required to first take it in 10th grade, starting with the Class of 2004.

O’Connell said he was confident that the board would follow his new recommendation for a two-year delay and, once it did, he said he then would cancel the two remaining test administrations this year -- in September and November.

“We want to give students fair and ample opportunity to learn. We want our students to do well,” O’Connell said.

Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley, said the postponement would be “another brick pulled out of the governor’s school reform agenda.” He also cited Davis’ decision last year not to fund the cash incentives to schools and teachers who help produce strong gains on other standardized tests.

“If this marks the slow death of the exit exam, then it really weakens the governor’s high-stakes testing strategy,” Fuller said.

In a recent interview, Davis said that he has been distracted by the budget deficit from getting involved in the testing debate but that he still believed he did the right thing by pushing during his first administration for the 2004 requirement. He said the test already has helped focus public schools on academic standards.

“We will have a high school exit exam. It will improve accountability. It will produce adults with better skill sets.... We have achieved it in principle. Now the question is, what [is] the best date to implement it,” Davis said.

On Friday, Davis spokeswoman Hilary McLean said the governor was not going to try to influence the education board’s vote. “I know the board is aware that the governor would rather see the test sooner than later. But we don’t want a test that will be tossed out on legal challenges,” she said.

Seven of the 10 board members told The Times they would vote for a delay of at least two years. The board also will weigh a proposal to lower the passing score in math. Currently, students have to get 55% of the questions correct to pass the test. The alternative would lower that to 40%.

Board members said they were reluctant to water down the passing level. Instead, they would rather hold off and give students more time to learn necessary skills to pass the exam.

“I think all of the data leads us to do this,” said board Vice President Joe Nunez. “But the question is, [for] how long?”

California joins a growing list of states that are backing away from their high school exit exams because of high failure rates.

Arizona and Alaska have postponed their tests to give students more time to prepare.

In Florida this year, more than 13,000 students have been denied diplomas because they did not pass the state test, provoking criticism from minority activists who note that many of the diploma-less seniors are African Americans, or Latinos and Haitians still learning English.

Lawmakers are now pushing legislation that would allow the state to use the results of the SAT and other tests to meet the graduation requirement.

Education experts said the experiences in these states reflect the difficulties of requiring accountability on an individual basis.

“Testing seems like an easy fix, but if there is not the opportunity to learn in place, then it’s not an easy fix,” said Keith Gayler, associate director of the Center on Education Policy, a Washington organization that studies exit-exam policies nationwide. “It’s not enough to put a test in place and expect results. You need quality instruction [and] a good curriculum that fits with the standards.”

That became apparent when the California results arrived: tens of thousands of students were failing.

Only 62% of approximately 459,000 students in the Class of 2004 have passed the math portion of the exam so far, even though many have taken the test multiple times.

Eighty-one percent of the same class have passed the English-language arts section.

A state-mandated report last month concluded that, even after repeated attempts over the next year, about 20% of the Class of 2004 might still be denied diplomas -- as many as 92,000 students.

However, the study also said the test was doing a good job in encouraging schools to teach material required in state standards and was prompting more remedial classes for students who previously failed the exam.

Civil rights groups say the test discriminates against minority students and those in low-income areas who attend the most crowded schools with the least experienced teachers. These students have passed the exam at far lower rates than white and Asian students.

Teachers and students in some communities have demonstrated and organized bus tours around the state to protest the exam.

“We don’t have the material or the classes that are needed to take a test of this sort,” said Marquise Williams, 16, a junior at Dorsey High School in Los Angeles and a member of Coalition for Educational Justice, a group that has participated in a campaign to end the test. “Maybe they should work on overcrowded schools, give us more teachers, more books. That would help.”