Let’s make a diploma mean something

In THE 1996 campaign against Proposition 209, which ultimately banned racial and ethnic preferences in University of California admissions, opponents predicted the near-disappearance of disadvantaged minorities from UC campuses. Minorities, they said, wouldn’t be able to compete; the playing field wasn’t yet level.

Today, seven years after the implementation of Prop. 209, the playing field still isn’t level, but the purveyors of gloom and low expectations were wrong. American Indian, African American and Latino admissions to the UC system have gone from 18.6% of total admissions in 1997, the year before elimination of race-conscious admissions, to 20.6% in 2005.

This same lament of low expectations and stereotyping is playing out now over the state’s high school exit exam, threatening to rob minority students -- indeed, all students -- of a diploma of which they can be proud.

The results announced this month from the most recent California High School Exit Examination show gains well ahead of earlier projections in pass rates for all students. For African Americans, scores rose 21% in math and 19% in English, and Latino scores rose 20% in math and 19% in English over their results of the previous school year. A disheartening gap with white and Asian students remains, but African Americans and Latinos still reached a pass rate of about 80% in this latest round of practice testing, with a year to go before the test that counts.

Amid this good news, leading members of the state Legislature want to prevent putting the exam fully into effect with the Class of 2006.

Assemblywoman Karen Bass, along with fellow Los Angeles Democrat Jackie Goldberg, chair of the Assembly Education Committee, have written a bill to let school districts develop alternate measures -- code for squishy projects and assessments -- by which students unable to pass the test could show their mastery of English and math (AB 1531).

State Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) wants to stop the exit exam altogether until public education in California is, essentially, transformed with more teachers, counselors, instructional materials and “rigorous supplementary programs” (SB 517). That probably means stopping it forever.

Additionally, with Bass’ support, Goldberg wrote a bill, which has passed the Assembly, to limit California textbooks to 200 pages, ostensibly to encourage more multimedia learning. Talk about dumbing down.

By rejecting the exit exam, these legislators are rejecting a test that tells us what ails education and gives a clear view of where our kids are. They aren’t focusing on the real problem: minority children’s learning gaps and the drastically higher dropout rates of black and Latino children, which long predates the exit exam. They would have schools continue to grant next-to-meaningless diplomas. They would deny parents a powerful tool to demand better teachers and the ouster of bad ones.

The unsubtle message of the excusers is that poor or minority students simply can’t attain an eighth- to 10th-grade level of proficiency in math and English -- which is all that the exit exam requires -- by the time they graduate.

We’ve heard these low-expectation claims before over the last decade: It was somehow racist to question the teaching of Ebonics, or black English, in Oakland schools, and it was a cabal of “bigots” who schemed to limit bilingual education in California. In each case, the charges were specious, and the changes that followed improved academic achievement by the affected minority students.

The state exit exam does not make unreachable demands. Any student who can’t reach pass rates of 60% in language arts or 55% in math on the first try in the 10th grade gets up to five more attempts and time to work on learning deficiencies.

The minority achievement gap is the most pressing civil rights issue of our day. No one’s interest is advanced, especially not that of poor and minority students, by blurring the facts and the need to urgently address them.

Eliminating a test that is a measure of achievement devalues the efforts of those who have worked hard. We are right to set realistic goals and demand effort from students. They have met honest challenges before, and will again.