Exit Exam, Round 2

Let's hear it for California's Supreme Court. The justices reversed the decision in an Alameda court thirteen days ago and, in the process, reaffirmed the validity of the state's high school exit exam.

About 47,000 students who failed the exam three times—an exam that tests math and language skills at the 8th grade level—while meeting every other requirement for graduation with a California high school diploma. Those students will be allowed to walk in commencement ceremonies but will not receive diplomas. Instead, they will get additional instruction over the summer and more chances to pass the exam.

It is true that the state—more accurately, the school districts—did, in some cases, fail to provide sufficient remediation after first and second failures, and that is something that must be fixed, ideally before the class of 2007 runs out of time. However, this exam has suffered three years of delays, and a fourth would continue to provide reasons for students and their parents to brush of a failure. No, I do not think that was the main cause, or even a frequent one, for the failures of 47,000 students, but I would be more than a little surprised if some students (thousands?) didn't think it really mattered.

This decision brings its fallout, of course, and that is a problem. There will be years of cases, many of them for individual students who were accepted to four-year schools (if people think that students are smarting, consider the egg on the faces of admissions counselors) that can no longer grant them admission. My own students—the much-maligned community college crowd—have commented on how simple the exam is, yet students admitted to CSUs and UCs fail it? Three times? There is a problem with this picture.

Not all of the fallout will fall under the heading of litigious hell. Indeed, next year California will probably see its highest levels of parent involvement in education in decades. Shaken from the comfortable thought that more delays might be coming, parents are going to have to do more to ensure their children measure up come test day. Districts, too, are going to have to hike up their britches and wade far into the mess of (justified) blame. I'll take this mess over the alternative. Any. Day.