Future of high school exit exam unclear as California revamps testing requirements

Photograph: Mediaphotos/iStock

Photo: Mediaphotos/iStock

The current overhaul of California'due south student testing programme is skipping, for now, the California High School Exit Examination, the i examination that's truly high stakes. If students don't pass, they don't receive a high school diploma.

Gov. Jerry Brown has said he volition sign Assembly Beak 484, which, every bit EdSource Today has reported, would append the current California Standards Tests in English language arts and math for grades 3 to 8 and 11. In its identify, schools could requite students a exercise examination aligned to the new Common Core standards currently nether development.

AB 484 makes no mention of the high school exit test, called CAHSEE. The California Section of Education also hasn't even so addressed the test's future, other than to say that the exam will be administered to the class of 2022 and, perhaps, beyond, fifty-fifty though the questions will even so be pegged to the state standards existence replaced by Common Cadre.

"The future of CAHSEE remains unclear; it'southward an ongoing give-and-take during this time of transition," said education department spokeswoman Pam Slater.

A math question from the California Loftier Schoolhouse Exit Exam. Source: California Department of Education

Not just CAHSEE, just the entire land assessment system is in transition. In a Jan 2022 report, State Superintendent of Public Teaching Tom Torlakson described, in detail, all the tests that will demand to be developed in every subject field and for all students, including English learners and those with special needs, to align with the Common Core Land Standards, a national set of educational standards that have been adopted by 45 states.

"I think that there will exist changes to the entire mural of assessments in California," said Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Hold, author of AB 484. "Included in that entire plan will exist the high school exit exam."

Bonilla said the Department of Education will develop proposals for the revamped testing and assessment organisation over the side by side few years following an extensive public procedure. In the interim, bookish help for students having difficulty passing the leave examination is dwindling.

Shrinking interventions

Estimated cumulative percentage of students in the classes of 2006-2013 that passed the high school go out exam by the finish of their senior yr. Source: California Department of Education

With a few relapses along the style, scores on CAHSEE have increased since 2006, the first twelvemonth that it counted toward graduation; the exam was field tested starting time in 2001 and was supposed to become a graduation requirement for the course of 2004, but lawsuits delayed the start.

The class of 2022 had the highest success rate to engagement, with 425,911 students – or 95.five percent – passing both the math and English linguistic communication arts sections of the test. The iv.5 percent who didn't laissez passer add up to slightly more than than xx,000 students who didn't receive diplomas.

Legislators established a California exit exam in 1999 when they canonical SBX1 ii with overwhelming bipartisan support. The bill, past former Country Sen. Jack O'Connell, D-Santa Barbara, who voters afterward elected as state superintendent of public teaching, mandates that students laissez passer a two-office proficiency test in mathematics and English language arts, by the end of 12th grade as a requirement for graduation. They have multiple opportunities to take the exam, starting in 10th grade and continuing for ii years after their senior year in high school; in one case students pass a section, either math or English language, they don't have to have that function over again.

CAHSEE math questions are set to 7th and eighth grade standards with some Algebra tacked on. English language arts tests ninth and 10th class material.

Until 2009, school districts were required to provide additional pedagogy for students who had not passed the test by the end of twelfth course, by letting them remain in schoolhouse for a fifth year or through a special CAHSEE tutoring grade. This was required under Assembly Beak 347, introduced in 2007 past sometime Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara. The bill settled Valenzuela v. O'Connell, a class action lawsuit filed in Feb 2006 confronting the Land Board of Education and so- state Superintendent O'Connell, alleging that some students, specially those in depression-income districts, were not receiving an equal opportunity to learn the material included on the test.

The settlement was essentially upended in 2009, when the state gave districts more flexibility to spend previously earmarked "chiselled" funds in whatsoever manner they wished. The modify eliminated mandated spending on two programs that funded CAHSEE interventions, one for summer school and the other for intensive instruction during the academic year. A majority of districts have since used the money earmarked for the exit exam intervention for unlike programs, according to a 2022 survey by the Legislative Analyst'southward Part.

In Sacramento County, for instance, but two districts – out of ix with high schools – are notwithstanding offer the supplemental instruction for students, said Sherry Arnold, who monitors CAHSEE intervention at the Sacramento County Part of Teaching.

"In the kickoff, every high school district took the money and observed the regulations," Arnold said. Some of the seven districts may still provide services, merely since they flexed the funds, they no longer have to written report to her office how they spend the money.

Students in the middle

Most of the students who don't laissez passer the get out exam are in special educational activity programs or are English language learners, like Cyndia Velarde, who was in the class of 2022 at James Lick High School in San Jose. She arrived in California from Guadalajara, Mexico, during centre school. Although she yet has difficulty with English, Velarde passed all her classes and said she did well on all the CAHSEE practice tests, and then she was shocked when she couldn't pass the real thing. Velarde said she took the examination about six times between her sophomore and senior years, but in the stop she couldn't graduate with her classmates.

"I (hadn't been) worried near getting my diploma," the 19-yr-old said. "I was going to go my diploma and I was going to move on."

Instead, she went to graduation as a visitor to run across her friends, and left depressed. Velarde said she's dreamed of getting a high school diploma since coming to the United States. She asked her high schoolhouse counselor if she could stay for a 5th twelvemonth, but somehow that never worked out. She doesn't want to stop trying to pass but doesn't know how to continue. She had never heard virtually adult education or customs college classes solely to assist students pass the test.

A high school degree is important, she said. "If I accept that I will experience more proud and will be able to get a job."

High school diplomas increase earnings by thousands of dollars. In California, employees with diplomas earn a median annual bacon of $27,485, according to the U.S. Demography Bureau. That's nearly $9,000 more than workers who never graduated from high school. They're also less probable to be unemployed.

Velarde'south case is "exactly the blazon of situation (the Valenzuela case) was designed to address," said chaser Brooks Allen with the ACLU of Southern California.

Allen says he can't sympathise why the state would allow districts to dorsum away from intervention programs while still requiring students to pass the examination. "How tin can you really be denying this really critical lifeline for so many students?" he asked.

Lost in transition

Information technology's not clear how many students are afflicted by the failing resource for CAHSEE. The Human Resources Research Organization, a lx-year-sometime research and consulting business firm, known as HumRRO, has been contracted by the state to evaluate the exam since it was first adult, and even researchers there don't have all the numbers.

"Information technology'south been a picayune frustrating that we oasis't been able to get very skilful information," said Lauress Wise, HumRRO's main inquiry scientist, who has been analyzing the state'due south exam data for a dozen years.

Wise said that of the 20,000 or and so students in the class of 2022 who didn't pass the test final year, no one knows how many of them accept met all other requirements for graduation or how many of them would not have graduated anyhow because they didn't have plenty credits. HumRRO estimates that almost one-half the students do keep trying to pass the examination after their senior twelvemonth, merely how many pass is some other unknown because the educatee database, the California Longitudinal Educatee Accomplishment Data System (CALPADS) tin can't rail kids one time they go out school. The unique student identifier given to each student past the information system isn't used by colleges or the Employment Development Department; like nigh official agencies, they use Social Security numbers.

Researchers practice know that by the time students are in high school, information technology may be too late to do much to help them laissez passer the exit exam, especially for disadvantaged students. Reviews of middle schools that collaborate with high schools have institute that "they exercise a little better at endmost the gaps on CAHSEE for minority students," Wise said. HumRRO is conducting more enquiry into successful middle schoolhouse programs this fall. Studies past the Public Policy Found of California determined that students in fourth course who are English learners are already at a slight disadvantage for passing the loftier school exit exam.

That still leaves open up the question of what to practise well-nigh the test in the adjacent few years. Although in that location have been no formal discussions, some ideas under loose consideration include scrapping the test and using the Smarter Balanced tests existence developed for the Common Cadre standards, said Country Board of Education President Michael Kirst. Because the new assessments are computer adaptive, pregnant that the level of difficulty of the questions changes based on a student'southward previous answer, the test could possibly be set up to a level that is commensurate with the current go out exam.

That may not exist every bit easy as it seems, said Richard Duran, a member of the country department of educational activity'due south technical advisory group working on CAHSEE and an education professor at UC Santa Barbara. The new figurer adaptive tests haven't even been field tested even so. "Nosotros have to requite that a hazard to meet how it operates," Duran said.

The ultimate decision volition exist based on policy, not technology, Duran said.

"The existent thing is how is land policy going to address the meaning of the high school diploma," he said. "I think information technology's a good fourth dimension to ask these questions and I think it's a very disruptive fourth dimension."

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Source: https://edsource.org/2013/future-of-high-school-exit-exam-unclear-as-california-revamps-testing-requirements/39146