California decided to cancel its high school exit exam. Now the state is trying to locate 32,000 students who were denied diplomas since 2006 because they did not pass the exam, but met all the other requirements for graduation.
Sifting through old high school transcripts and searching for names on Facebook, school officials across California are scrambling to hand out thousands of diplomas to former students, many of whom gave up on graduating and don’t realize they’re now eligible.
The young men and women, some in their late 20s, became sudden qualifiers for a diploma after Gov. Jerry Brown last week retroactively revoked the requirement that all students pass the controversial California High School Exit Exam. With the stroke of a pen, the governor brought relief to up to 32,000 students since the class of 2006 who only needed to pass the test to graduate.
Some districts are using Facebook and other social media to search for former students.
“Sifting through old high school transcripts and searching for names on Facebook, school officials across California are scrambling to hand out thousands of diplomas to former students, many of whom gave up on graduating and don’t realize they’re now eligible.
The young men and women, some in their late 20s, became sudden qualifiers for a diploma after Gov. Jerry Brown last week retroactively revoked the requirement that all students pass the controversial California High School Exit Exam. With the stroke of a pen, the governor brought relief to up to 32,000 students since the class of 2006 who only needed to pass the test to graduate.
The about-face on the Exit Exam began earlier this year when the state Department of Education stopped administering the test while the Legislature considered suspending the graduation requirement.
As The Chronicle reported in August, that left thousands of members of the class of 2015 in limbo, required to pass a test the state no longer offered. An emergency state law waived the Exit Exam requirement for the class of 2015, but did not address what would happen to former students still trying to pass the test and get a diploma years after they left high school.
The new law, signed by the governor Wednesday, not only revoked the Exit Exam graduation requirement going back to the class of 2006, but also suspended it through 2017. State officials now must decide whether to create a new test aligned with the new Common Core standards or come up with another way to verify a level of academic proficiency needed to get a diploma.
As is often the case, California is forging a different path from the rest of the nation.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Other articles on the same story:
Op-ed by Michael Mahoney, LA Times: Goodbye and good riddance to California’s high school exit exam
LA Times, 10/7/2015: Gov. Jerry Brown signs measure suspending high school exit exam
San Jose Mercury, 10/9/2015: California exit exam’s demise revives dreams for thousands
Tom Torlakson, 10/14/15: New times demand new ways to support students and schools
The ounce of prevention which would have been worth far more than this pound of cure. This in my view is a precursor of what those in authority will find out as the educational “deform” is continued.
well stated.
I wish California would campion the cause of public education and put the brakes on charterization. At the least, make charters accountable with our public monies and require charters who get public monies to have highly qualified teachers and other personnel. I for one am supporting the repeal of the charter laws. Dual school systems are inherently unequal and discriminatory.
Agree with you Paula…
“State officials now must decide whether to create a new test aligned with the new Common Core standards”
And what? Denying graduation to one million students per year?
Or, set the cut score at a 1 out of 4, so only a few thousand don’t graduate, and then give them a waiver in ten years?
File under, what are they smoking?
“…another way to verify student proficiency.”
What happened to grades?
That was my first question when I read that passage.
I thought the same too, but then thought about the experience our 9th grade biology teacher faced when she had 30-percent of her students earn “F”s. The principal ran to her room and made her call every student into her room who was failing so the kids could be “successful” by doing over old assignments.
A good majority of these kiddos passed, but learned nothing from it. The assignments turned into her were mostly plagiarized. This teacher was devastated. She was an excellent teacher too who did everything she could do to help students. Unfortunately, these thirty-percent of kiddos didn’t hit the mark and didn’t take advantage of her support, but ended up passing anyway.
The scary part is that this all occurred in one day. Students had one day to get enough makeup work in to pass.
But, I’m hoping this isn’t a common occurrence – which is why grades are a total acceptable form of measuring proficiency.
It is a very, very common occurrence. Like most people who read here, I am against high-stakes standardized tests for ranking and funding, but I see exit exams as different.
As a teacher it is emotionally very difficult to give low grades to students, even when their achievement is low. I hate being the guy who says they have not learned enough. So do other teachers and principals – and that’s why you get college students who can’t do grade 9 math.
I was a private tutor in university for many years and also met numerous students fresh off 90% averages in grade 12 science and math, who were unable to do basic stuff. These students could do grade 9 math, but did not know the graphs of basic functions, did not know how to use the Periodic Table.
Look, the lack of proficiency among lots of entering university students with very high grade 12 averages is legendary, and I think this partly explains why people go for groups like Teach for America despite their well-earned bad reputation.
Exit exams – good idea, and widely practiced in other countries who have not bought into the high-stakes testing and charter school scams.
And so begins the slow, soft parade of edu-political walk back.
When Arne was back there in lab school
He was the person there
Who put forth the proposition
That you can measure children with tests
Measure children with tests?
Measure children with tests?
YOU CANNOT MEASURE CHILDREN WITH TESTS!
Can we give them sanctuary?
Such mixed feelings on this. I mean, I’m certainly glad they canceled it now. But what if you’re one of those whose lives were ruined nine years ago? I guess this is some vindication, but it will be awfully hard for those people to re-start their lives. What a cruel requirement in the first place (and, yes, that goes for any other state or district that has standardized tests as graduation requirements).
Utah now has a requirement, effective for the 2016 class, to pass the citizenship test before they are allowed to graduate. The kids can pass it as early ass 6th grade, but my district won’t allow the kids to take it until their required senior year civics class. That doesn’t give a of time for remediation, and we have NO IDEA what the test looks like.
Utah also has a law allowed parents to opt students out of any national or state standardized testing. So parents could opt their kids out of this test, but then the kid doesn’t graduate.
I wonder what ramifications this will have?
Oy. As early AS 6th grade. Sorry about that.
Imagine how many jobs they have been denied due to no diploma?… I smell a lawsuit.
Can this now be a liability issue? These students were denied a diploma, which possibly prevented them from earning a living. Now, the state of CA says they’ve met the requirements??!! Whose going to pay them back for lost income?
I see a mess of lawsuits coming on….
On one hand, I really hope for lawsuits – it will be vindication for those who were denied their diploma, as well as a warning to other states and districts. But on the other hand, it will just be yet another excuse to drain money from public schools. “Well, gee, we’d really like to fund that, but because of all these lawsuits….” I can already hear the politicians. Even as the miraculously find money for new stadiums and tourist attractions and other pet projects.
What a commentary on these unnecessary tests. So much needless stress on all these people. Seems to me someone should be held responsible.
CA has NO ACCOUNTABILITY WHATSOEVER for Education. Who will know if children have learned what it takes to go out into the real world w/o the CASHEE? Or any other measure of learning?
SBAC? Is that a measure of learning? Michael Kirst, Pres. of CA Bd. of Ed stated in April that “We’re not about proficiency. That’s a federal word.”
If we’re not about proficiency and not about accountability just close the schools.
The better system is to train admins and dept chairs to eval Ts appropriately, test curric in the course w tests and portfolios aligned to objectives, remove unrelated criteria of compliance, extra cred for tissue boxes etc so that passing is not a polluted grade, have tiers for diplomas that identify criteria for “passing” (In NY a regents diploma used to mean ready for college courses. The right of students to graduate as a literate person w basic competency but not specifically college ready is not an unreasonable expectation), and when the kid achieves their competency goals, they get one of several different standards of diploma. Plenty of accountability that is related to the school setting and rigorous enough to pass or go on to next level.
To make their graduation based on their scores on a single test w an expectation of highest achievement for college readiness using unrelated interpretation of standards created by companies outside of the school arena is not only unreasonable, it also isn’t accountability so much as the delusional belief that four years of work can be summed up in a day. It’s false data idolatry.
“As is often the case, California is forging a different path from the rest of the nation.”
Until the Bill Gates Cabal, the Koch brothers, Eli Broad and the Walton family buy California. How much will it cost them to win the governor’s mansion and the majority in the legislature?
Lloyd, governors are expensive. Legislators not so much
How many governors have the bought so far—Scott Walker is one and I’ve read of others?
Cuomo is on lease. But it’s his own lease, so nobody really owns him, he’s totally independent. Except for all of the fine print in his contract, which actually he wrote, so really he is merely beholden to himself, in a legal sense.
Governor Jerry Brown cannot be bought. We all know, though, that we could be one governor away from becoming New York.
I am very disappointed that Governor Brown vetoed the bill to ban for-profit charters.
True. Imagine how much the oligarchs will spend to buy California’s governor.
Gavin Newsome
It’s funny, by Jerry Brown signed my college diploma the first time he was in office!
Governor Brown – Your education tax dollars are going into the pockets of for profit charters. You kow that chunk of tax taken out of your paycheck. That money belongs to public schools per Washington State.
I’m wondering if this action will provide a basis for lawsuits or a class action on the part of recipients of these retroactive diplomas, claiming lost earnings from better jobs for which they couldn’t at the time have been considered, but they are now proven to have been qualified all along for such consideration? Such actions could be a 2-edged sword: on the one hand, these people have been damaged financially within some measurable range; on the other hand, a cost to CA of millions or billions of dollars to settle suits would be a deterrent to other states considering similar action.
I am fairly sure you can’t sue a state for following the law then changing it.
It was legal at the time and approved by elected legislators.
That said numerous lives have been irreparably harmed, but you can’t hold the creator and enforcer of the law responsible in most cases. Democracy is imperfect and California voted in people who decided this was best for schools.
Hindsight is 20/20.
“Democracy is Imperfect”
Democracy is flawed
Especially in Cal
Where Ronald was a god
And Arnold was his pal
This is great for former students. But before anyone ahouts Eureka! in California, the whole purpose of this is to make way for the new exit exam aligned with SBAC. The train has already left the station on that. http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-me-pc-high-school-exit-exam-20151007-story.html
From 3 months ago when WA state gave a waiver for the Biology exit exam, http://nwnewsnetwork.org/post/washington-lawmakers-announce-deal-suspend-biology-exam-class-size-measure
Apparently not letting kids graduate who have passed their high school classes is not very popular. A high school diploma means a lot to many families. If that is taken away with any hint of unfairness, the lawmakers will hear about it.
State education departments all across the land are now planning exactly how they are going to dig their high school students out of the very steep and deep hole they have dug in the name of “rigor”. Slowly but surely they are coming to the realization that the bar was raised too high for too many. The simple solution is to raise the floor, post facto. Easy to spin and easy to sell. And just like that our American students have magically made it over the high bar. And when the next round of the SAT, ACT, NEAP, and PISA scores remain flat, the curtain will be pulled back on the “soft parade of edu-political walk back”. And once again the big dog continues to wag the tail.
I suspect Cuomo will keep digging until he hits China.
He ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.
I hope Cuomo digs that tunnel and is the first to break through to the other side. I hope he can hold his breathe for a long time. If he digs straight to the other side of the earth from New York, he will come up in the Indian Ocean south west of Perth, Australia. From what I can see from a depth map of the Indian Ocean that area is between 13k -16k feet deep
Here’s a site that shows you the other side of the world from any location on the earth. Cool!
http://www.freemaptools.com/tunnel-to-other-side-of-the-earth.htm
Of course, if he digs toward the center, he won’t have to worry about holding his breath on the other side.
Problem solved.
True. He will be baked, boiled and fried.
A couple of (probably unnecessary) rejoinders here:
“He ain’t the brightest bulb in the socket.”
“When Cuomo hit rock bottom, he continued to dig.”
Having grown up in California, yes, it often paves the way. Now, if they can just drop the vaccination requirement. Maybe we have hope after all!
Like so many things in education, teachers get yanked one way and then another. You start to lose sight of the reason you are there. It always works better when you start with what you have as far as their abilities and work from there. Teaching is always hard work – there is just no way around that. Impossible goals, reward and punishment do not work.
Georgia already did this..
So did Utah. Just before the exam would have derailed students, the economy collapsed and the test was cut as a cost-saving measure. I would also not be surprised if there had been an outcry that made the decision easier, because the idea of a graduation test has never come up again, save the stupid new citizenship test requirement, which I expect will quietly disappear over the next year or two as kids are denied diplomas. After all, high schools live and die on their graduation rates, and this could really hurt those rates.
And so the politicians quietly walk back their super-rigorous HS graduation standards while continuing to pummel the 8 to 14 tear olds with NCLB testing dogma.