As School Exit Tests Prove Tough, States Ease Standards

[groovedaddy]

A law adopting statewide high school exams for graduation took effect in Pennsylvania on Saturday, with the goal of ensuring that students leaving high school are prepared for college and the workplace. But critics say the requirement has been so watered down that it is unlikely to have major impact.

The situation in Pennsylvania mirrors what has happened in many of the 26 states that have adopted high school exit exams. As deadlines approached for schools to start making passage of the exams a requirement for graduation, and practice tests indicated that large numbers of students would fail, many states softened standards, delayed the requirement or added alternative paths to a diploma.

People who have studied the exams, which affect two-thirds of the nation’s public school students, say they often fall short of officials’ ambitious goals.

“The real pattern in states has been that the standards are lowered so much that the exams end up not benefiting students who pass them while still hurting the students who fail them,” said John Robert Warren, an expert on exit exams and a professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/education/12exit.html?th&emc=th

[elleng]

1. Posted this yesterday. Hope there's more interest today!

[tonysam]

2. That's all we need, a movement to RAISE "standards" even more

so that there will be even MORE dropouts who in turn become cheap labor for employers.

[Mojorabbit]

3. Everyone of my nieces and nephews

had to do remedial work in college to be brought up to par before they could begin regular classes. Passing a child through who is not ready isn't doing them any favors.

[tonysam]

5. What makes you think all kids should be pushed towards college?

They shouldn't be. That's why I am opposed to these stupid "exit exams" in high school. There should be far more emphasis on vocational training, not college.

Do you think it is doing kids any favors to force them to drop out, costing society FAR more in the long run in prison costs, welfare, low-wage jobs, etc.?

I don't want the "standards" upped because it is obvious why they are being upped. The standards aren't EVER good enough for these reformer assholes. They WANT dropouts because they are cheap labor.

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. What you said!

Our K-12 schools are supposed to be preparing our kids for life as independent adults. A college education is not necessary especially in this economy where so many college graduates are employed in the service industry.

As NCLB took over our schools vocational programs were dropped. I think there is a connection between that and the dropout rate. Kids who aren't interested or who can't afford college are more likely to drop out when the only courses available to them are college prep courses.

[tonysam]

7. It should be the way it was when I was in high school.

We had "career clusters" in addition to college preparation courses, so that students could train in office work, welding, auto mechanics, carpentry, and other fields. You know, useful fields for those students not inclined to go to college.

But of course vocationally-trained high school graduates are not what the privatizers want. They want a cheap labor pool of those kids who can't cut college-level coursework and so they are forced out of school altogether or have to get GEDs, which are not valued by these same privatizers.

I saw through this "standards" crap way, way back in the late 1970s-early 1980s when "compentency" exams were first instituted on high school students. The "standards" would NEVER be good enough for these "reformers"; they would simply move the goal posts.

You are now seeing little kids being forcefed algebra concepts in elementary school and fullblown algebra in middle school--LONG before many students can handle it because of cognitive thinking/abstract thinking issues. This difficult subject is being taught some three to four years EARLIER than when I was going through school (fullblown algebra was taught in 10th grade and above). This was a way I believe to "track" kids years before they entered high school, much less what they did beyond high school.

In other words, the "standards" crap is one way of creating a permanent underclass in our country. This was more a political and economic goal than an educational one.

[Mojorabbit]

8. I am saying that

these kids should not have to have remedial classes to catch them up on stuff they should have learned in high school.
This is junior college.

[stray cat]

9. Nothing like college grads in the work force who can't divide by 10

are these the doctors you want operating on you and the nurses measuring a dose of a drug?

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. Don't doctors and nurses have to take competency tests to be licensed?

Seems like that would weed out the ones who are math challenged.

[stray cat]

10. Who wants incompetent idiots in the work force - I don't want to pay them if they can't work

[HopeHoops]

4. Texas apparently has an easy graduation exam - one question:

"Are you a God-fearin' Republican?"

Some people have been known to cheat.

[zacherystaylor]

11. Excessive costs

"The exams are not cheap. Education officials in Pennsylvania estimate it will cost $176 million to develop and administer the tests and model curriculum through 2014-15, and about $31 million to administer each year after that."

In adition to reforming the way education is handled so that children will focus more on the top priorities we need reform to cut the cost of education without cutting quality. There needs to be more openness about why these cost so much.

They should have open books so that we know where all this money is going.

Education reform should also involve reform of the copyright laws. Copyright laws are keeping educational costs much higher than they should be and controling information so that the public doesn't have the information they need to make decisions in elections about all subjects.

Information is organized better and made available to everyone it will make education lessexpensive and enable everyone to help educate them selves if they're determined enough.