Exit Exams Fail to Impress
Re “The Long Journey to June,” editorial, May 2: Has anyone really looked at the high school exit exam? It really is a poor example of what students should know in order to graduate high school. Then throw in the STAR exam and the word “exam” and “graduation” become a real joke. Many of us come from other regions of the United States and somehow landed here in California. Think back to your high school days. I know that I remember mine.
We had the New York State Regents Exams to face before we could even think of graduating high school. Now, those were exams. Even if you were passing the class, you had certain Regents Exams you had to pass or you did not get credit for the class. Class time was not taken away for these. You took them during final exam week and held your breath until the results were posted.
Students in schools today, at least those in the LAUSD, really do not have much worry about graduation. It is really handed to them, I think, on a silver platter, as the saying goes. I would love to see the students in today’s world take a few of those Regents Exams.
Stephanie Schwartz
Teacher, Granada Hills Charter High School
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As a public middle school teacher for over 20 years, I strongly favor high academic standards and holding students and schools accountable for their mastery. Here is one such standard from the California State Social Studies Curriculum. See if you can guess the grade level at which mastery of this standard is required:
“The stories of ordinary and extraordinary people help describe the range and continuity of human experience and introduce the concepts of courage, self-control, justice, heroism, leadership, deliberation, and individual responsibility. Historical empathy for how people lived and worked long ago reinforces the concept of civic behavior: how we interact respectfully with each other, following rules, and respecting the rights of others.” That’s right, master this standard and you are eligible to matriculate to ... the first grade!
As the recent events at Santa Monica and Jefferson high schools, and countless others unreported, show, it is time to begin remediation and hold ourselves accountable. The “long journey to June” must begin with the first day of kindergarten. It’s time that we establish Human Relations Departments, make “relational science” a part of the curriculum and elevate “relating,” on a daily basis, to the status of the other three Rs.
Joe Provisor
Palms Middle School
LAUSD
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The push toward high stakes standardized testing, including the high school exit exam, does nothing to ensure or protect learning. Just the opposite is occurring. Our classrooms are now training centers, where learning and critical thinking are secondary to a narrowed curriculum where just getting the answer right for the test is the goal.
Learning is a matter of synthesis and application, a process that takes time and community; a building block process. Teachers know it, parents know it, kids know it.
The current environment, thanks to No Child Left Behind and the mandated high school exit exam, assumes that all children are the same and can learn in the same way. It also assumes that a level playing field exists in our schools, that all learners are the same, that all gifted, special-ed, English learners and regular kids have the same skills and the same resources. None of it makes sense, and our kids are paying the price.
Our California legislators need to get real about the consequences of high-stakes testing. It is not about letting kids slide; it’s about teaching and learning and the real crisis that No Child Left Behind has created for education: Our schools are now training centers. The cost of this debacle will be felt for generations.
Diane Quezada-Singer
Anaheim Hills
