Exit Exams Under Fire

Yes, exit exams. The kind you take upon completion of 12 grades of school to see if you've learned enough to be worthy of a diploma. To Ol' BC this sounds like a capital idea. To some, their disagreement is enough to sue. According to this Ruben Navarrette column, we won't want to include him in their camp.

If Gonzalez gets the injunction, it would allow those California high
school students who have not passed the test to graduate this year. One study
estimated that as many as 100,000 12th-graders – about one out of five in the
state – had not yet passed at least one section of the test.
You see the
problem. What we should be worried about isn't the test but what the test is
revealing, namely that our public schools are failing to provide many of our
kids with even basic academic skills. Now that's criminal.

You see the problem. What we should be worried about isn't the test but what the test is revealing. Bingo. Bingo. Bingo. Way to go Ruben. Asking a student to get a fifty percent in eighth grade math and ninth and tenth grade English isn't asking too much. It denotes enough development of the intellect to be able to function in society. It certainly isn't fair to blame the schools solely. Most kids are not expected to achieve by their parents. I know several teachers and they all have the desire to teach and really want the best for the students they have. Recently, however, they have been denied the right to have order in their classes. There is virtually no discipline in the schools so there can be no environment conducive to learning. This started with the courts and is being continued by spineless school administrators who fear legal action.



Ol' BC has just one question. How long will it be before a group who passes the test sues for issuing diplomas to those who don't pass it, thus cheapening the value of their work for twelve years. Sounds like a suit that has merit to me. Of course that would depend on the result of the idiotic case in California.

Navarrette sums it up pretty well as he concludes the column.

So you better watch out. This brand of lunacy could be coming to a school district near you.

Sad, but very likely.

Just an observation.