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...
...“Momentum is definitely still moving in favor of states’ adopting these exit exams,” said John F. Jennings, the president of the Center on Education Policy, which publishes annual reports on high school exit exams.
Mr. Jennings added that this momentum was likely to grow next month when the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, which represents state school superintendents, are to release a common core of state standards in English-language arts and mathematics for kindergarten through Grade 12. Federal officials have set aside $350 million for states to create tests that correspond to the new national standards, and Mr. Jennings said there was a good chance that states would consider adopting these new tests for their exit exams...
2 comments:
Richard,
If exit exams mean tests students must pass to graduate, I don't think we are considering that in Kentucky. We're likely headed toward end-of-course exams, and we're discussing allowing the scores to contribute to student grade, but (a) the most recent thoughts have been about making the grade part a school or district option and (b) even where the scores were used, a student could still get to graduation with a very low test score if other parts of the grsde were strong enough.
Arrgh. Yes, of course. Thanks for the correction Susan.
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