Gilroy
– The Class of 2006 – taking the high school exit exam this year
for the first time – passed in encouraging numbers after the state
revised the test due to previous students’ poor performance.
By Lori Stuenkel
Gilroy – The Class of 2006 – taking the high school exit exam this year for the first time – passed in encouraging numbers after the state revised the test due to previous students’ poor performance.
In the Gilroy Unified School District, 65 percent of this year’s juniors passed the math portion of the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) and 73 percent passed the English section.
“We now have a manageable number of kids that we really need to focus on for the next two years,” Superintendent Edwin Diaz said.
The results of this year’s exit exam and other tests released with the state’s Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Program Monday point to the district’s biggest area of concern: high school math scores.
In Santa Clara County, 82 percent of students passed the math and 81 percent passed the English part of the test. Statewide, roughly 75 percent of students passed in both English and math.
“Those are good scores for a beginning,” said Jack O’Connell, state superintendent of public instruction. “I’m hopeful, and I certainly will be working with high schools around the state, that they will be working with that 25 percent of students who have not passed.”
The state postponed requiring the exit exam until the Class of 2006 graduates after the Class of 2004 struggled to pass, even after taking the test multiple times.
Education officials have repeatedly said that this time, the exit exam is the real deal.
“I am not even contemplating any additional postponement – period,” O’Connell said.
Since the postponement, Gilroy High School students have become better prepared to pass the exit exam. Educators attribute part of that to a re-design of the test that measures students’ proficiency in basic ninth- and tenth-grade standards.
“For sure, this group of 10th-graders was much more likely to pass the CAHSEE the first time out,” GHS Principal Bob Bravo said. “Some of it might be due to the changes in the test, but I’d like to think some of it is due to the teachers just being more knowledgeable about what they have to do.”
The exit exam this year was a third shorter – language arts testing took one day instead of two, students wrote one essay instead of two and answered about 15 fewer multiple choice questions.
The state also changed the content of some questions. For example, it removed some questions that used mathematical charts that students simply weren’t seeing in the classroom. The test includes English standards from grades 9 and 10, and math standards from grades 6 and 7, plus Algebra 1.
GUSD still must strive to improve high school test scores overall, Diaz said.
“The students passing the high school exit exam (are at) a lower standard than being proficient or advanced on the (California Standards Test),” he said. The CST is used by the state and federal governments to grade schools. “With the CST, proficient and advanced is, you’re proficient enough that you’re ready for college-level work, which is a whole different standard than the exit exam.”
“Math is our area of major concern,” Bravo said. “I think we need to do better in all the courses.”
On the CST, 3 percent of Algebra I students scored at or above proficient last year. That includes students in grades 9, 10 and 11. The previous year, it was 4 percent.
More students were scoring in the lowest of the five scoring tiers than the year before, as well.
In geometry, 12 percent of students in grades 9, 10 and 11 were proficient or advanced last year, up only slightly from 11 percent the year before.
“Last spring, we identified that and I think the results just kind of bear out, just kind of validate that it is an area of focus and we’re going to have to work harder in that area,” Diaz said.
Statewide, high school math will be a focus as well.
“Our high school test scores remain unacceptably low,” O’Connell said. “For me, that calls for increased rigor and focus on our high schools – we simply need to make high schools a priority.”
