Letting Students Off the Hook Doesn’t Help Them

At least in part because of a kid named Scarecrow, I see Judge Robert B. Freedman as an enabler. The Alameda County Superior Court judge is probably still glowing from the praise that civil rights groups and teary-eyed students have showered on his decision to let seniors who flunked the state’s high school exit exam graduate anyway.

I think his sloppy thinking will reinforce young people’s suspicion that adults are as capricious as they are weak-willed.

My take on the exam began to solidify in the predawn chill of a late winter morning as I watched seniors who had failed the test begin gathering outside Fremont High School. Not long after the sun rose, 150 of these teens headed off in buses for a test preparation “boot camp” at Los Angeles Trade Tech College.

Christina Mata, 18, sat near the back wearing a Baby Phat jacket and jeans. Bashfully tapping the tiny diamond in her left cheek, she said she wants to be a teacher. But she had twice failed both the math and English segments.

Scarecrow, as his football teammates call 17-year-old Deshawn Hill, sat nearby, edging into the aisle and the conversation. The bus rumbled past storefront churches and 99-cent shops, and Scarecrow spouted his story in full-sentence bursts: “All my life I have been good at math. When I grow up, I want to be an accountant. In the year 2005, I applied to many colleges and only got accepted at two.”

Deciding between Bethune-Cookman College in Florida and Tuskegee University in Alabama wasn’t his only concern, however. He also had to pass the exam’s English segment.

In a Trade Tech classroom, Fremont English and drama teacher Jill Pyrko paced back and forth, alternately coaching students on test-taking skills and grilling them on content. To make them see that they need to search for key words, she strapped on a headlamp and scanned the room. When someone got something right, she smacked a desk and yelled “Shabaam!”

Scarecrow popped off intelligent answers and recited a love poem he’d scrawled in a creative writing drill. He also poked a friend and scribbled on a big can of Arizona Iced Tea.

Sensing anxiety in some of the students, Pyrko had them stand and stretch, and take deep breaths.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Scared,” Christina whispered.

Outside, at break, a student nudged the shy girl in my direction. Within 20 seconds, a crowd of earnest young Latinos had gathered. Working together to combine courage and English skills, they said they’d had too many classes without teachers. They said they’d go months with substitutes who didn’t teach. They said they’d worked hard and done their best, and that it would break their parents’ hearts if they didn’t graduate. Some of their parents, they said, were going to hold a news conference in hopes of blocking the exit exam.

A counselor and his supervisor had been listening, and when I joined them, they noted, in very low voices, that most Fremont seniors, regardless of language skills, regardless of substitutes, had already passed the test and those who hadn’t had two more tries. They reminded me that their team was offering Saturday prep courses as well as these weeklong, half-day, off-campus boot camps for each part of the test.

They wouldn’t be surprised, they said, if the parents who staged the protest were among those who never returned calls or answered the door when school counselors came to their apartments to warn that their children’s diplomas were at risk.

A couple of weeks earlier, I’d attended one of the Saturday prep sessions with Simone Charles, Fremont’s “extended learning administrator.” I’d watched her ambush students with spontaneous pep talks. I’d seen the rah-rah posters for boot camp that the ebullient woman had plastered all over the school.

Charles told me she has no children, and gave a gesture that took in the whole troubled school. “These are my babies,” she said. Then she closed her eyes and crossed her fingers on both hands. “Come on, babies,” she said. “You can do it.”

It’s tough boosting students over obstacles -- economic, societal, cultural, psychological. Now, Charles said, there was another hurdle: some kids’ smug certainty that authorities would again lack the nerve to hold them accountable.

I talked to Charles again last week, before Judge Freedman finalized his injunction blocking the test results. She had just received students’ scores from the test for which they’d been preparing at that boot camp. She was on the verge of rapture. Almost everyone at the boot camp had passed.

I also received a call from Scarecrow, a young man who figures he’s had 20 foster families and now lives with his sister and her young children in a small apartment in a raucous building in the heart of gang country.

I get sad thinking about the students who didn’t pass the test -- including Christina, the aspiring teacher who again failed the math section and whose only hope for a diploma now is that she tried a fourth time last week.

Thinking about Scarecrow ticks me off.

I don’t care that he says he supports his friends who don’t think it’s fair that they’ve been unable to conquer that test. I care about what I heard in his voice when he called and blurted, “I passed.” What I heard was joy and pride in an accomplishment that, for a moment anyway, had really meant something.

To discuss this column or to give your views on the state’s exit exam, go to latimes.com/schoolme.