Should California high school students who fail the exit exam be allowed to graduate?

[Wolfe Tone]

Multiple choice is necessary. How else are you going to grade millions of kids?

By getting people to mark it. I think teachers here can get a job marking over the summer.

At least tell me the multiple choice is negativly marked. Other wise someone could guess there way through the test

 

[Uiler]

his typo

The problem was I copied and pasted from a pdf file. It seems to have trouble with special characters, including fractions (the 1/2 in this case). It also has problems with power - I added the extra "^" myself after the paste. I was less careful later on and forgot to check the pasted text. Sorry.

 

[Urederra]

Nah... it is a simple polynomial function, nothing fancy with trigonometric functions or logs. High schoolers should be able at least to calculate maxima, minima and limits, If they don't know one of them, they'll have lower scores. If they don't know any, they should fail.

And what does the score mean, anyway? If all the math questions are like that is either you know how to drag numbers into the formula and your score should be close to 100% or you don't and your score should be close to 0. Good tests should have some easy questions, some average questions and some difficult questions. In that way the score means something and universities would be able to accept students according to the score of the test, not to your football skills, money your parents have or the service you have done to your community.

have anyone tried the test I linked? I am curious.

 

[A'AbarachAmadan]

There must be a standard and those who fail it should not be allowed to graduate. However, I don't believe this is the correct standard. While the 'richy riches' on here scoff at the easiness of the exam, I don't see a single item of the examples presented that is useful to the person that does not aspire to go to college or a technical trade job (one could work at MANY jobs and not be able to answer a single question of the examples);and it certainly would be difficult for someone for whom English is a second language that is rarely spoken. Maybe they should modify the test.

 

[warpus]

IMHO the tests appear to be as easy as the teacher saying:

"Ok, In order to pass you're going to have to say A"

And then 25% of the students say "B"

So if you fail - have fun working at McDonald's for the rest of your life. You simply did not try hard enough.

 

[IglooDame]

Is there anything on the exam that is not actually taught in the California high school curriculum at some point? Assuming the answer is 'no' then it appears fairly reasonable to require passing the exam in order to earn the diploma.

 

[Uiler]

There must be a standard and those who fail it should not be allowed to graduate. However, I don't believe this is the correct standard. While the 'richy riches' on here scoff at the easiness of the exam, I don't see a single item of the examples presented that is useful to the person that does not aspire to go to college or a technical trade job (one could work at MANY jobs and not be able to answer a single question of the examples);and it certainly would be difficult for someone for whom English is a second language that is rarely spoken. Maybe they should modify the test.

Firstly, I come from a poor immigrant family from rural China. Neither of my parents finished high school and neither of them speak English. For years they did hard manual labour. Not once did they ever use the excuse of "we are too poor" or "we are a minority" for bad grades. If I did badly (and for them badly was a "B") it was *my* fault and theirs for not bringing me up the right way. Come to think of it, I have *never* heard anyone in the Chinese immigrant community I grew up in use those excuses. The attitude I learnt when growing up as an immigrant in a poor family was, being poor and a minority just means that you need to try harder. It's no excuse for failure. It's unfair but well, life is unfair.

Secondly, this is a high school exit exam, not an IQ test or a feel-good round of multicultural group hugs. It is supposed to certify that if somone graduates from a California high school they have at the bare minimum these set of skills. Basically, it's a checklist. Does he know A, B, C, etc. I think basic knowledge of English is something that 99% of society expects an American high school graduate to know.

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

No, if they can't pass a basic exam they should not be given a high school diploma. Make them work to earn it or let them drop out and performed unskilled labor.

 

[Zuffox]

Being from Denmark and all I'm not too acquainted with the American school system so how old are you approximately, when you take the exam?

 

[Uiler]

No, if they can't pass a basic exam they should not be given a high school diploma. Make them work to earn it or let them drop out and performed unskilled labor.

As I said I come from a poor immigrant family. One of the chief weapons my parents used to scare me into studying harder was to say to me, "If you don't do well in school, you will end up in the same sort of jobs as us for the rest of your life. Also, no one will respect you. Everyone will look down on you." My grandma put it best I think when she said, "If you don't do well in school you will end up shovelling ****." Thinking about the sort of jobs that my parents did was more than enough to scare me into studying harder.

Also, what's the *use* of having a high school diploma if you can't do at the very least basic maths and English? Is it just a sign that you've spent the last few years sitting at a desk in a certain building? A high school diploma like any other diploma is just a piece of paper. It is society's belief that having that piece of paper means you know at the very least X and Y that gives it any sort of value. However, if half the students with that piece of paper don't know X and Y, then it's just a worthless piece of junk. So I believe those pushing to repeal the test because it will "hurt" students too much are actually not helping them. Sure they get the piece of paper. But what use is it if *because* they were allowed to graduate even though they don't have the very basic skills society expects high school graduates to have that piece of paper becomes worthless. Student: "Yah, yah I have a diploma. Give me a job." Employer: "Give me a break. That diploma is worthless. It doesn't mean you can even read the manual for my machine." And it's not just them that suffers but also the students who *do* pass the exam who will have their pieces of paper devalued. Eventually it will mean that for anything but for the most basic low-paying jobs, employers will start demand something one level higher than a high-school diploma. It's like how in some countries where the local currency is so devalued by inflation only US dollars are accepted. In fact I believe one of the chief reasons for implementing this exit exam in the first place was *because* the "value" of Californian high school diplomas had already been devalued by society's loss of faith in public schools to judge whether a student is fit to graduate or not.

 

[Elrohir]

Being from Denmark and all I'm not too acquainted with the American school system so how old are you approximately, when you take the exam?

You generally graduate High School when you are 18. If you fail a grade or more then you can be older, and depending on when your birthday is, or if you skip grades you can be younger. 18 is the average age, though.

Those questions are ridiculously easy. If you can't answer enough of those correctly to get a passing grade, you should be kicked back several grades, not rewarded. You have the retain the information, not just sit there and drool. If you can't pass the tests, you don't get graduated; that seems perfectly fair and simple to me. And for crying out loud, those are not hard questions; I could have easily answered those correctly when I was 12, if not younger.

 

[plarq]

Agreed, these question are damn easy! For those whose native language is not English, they should study English in a language training center before entering regular school.

 

[capslock]

Maybe if they took the focus of their eductation system off of gay history and culture and put it back to learning useful subjects, like addition and grammar, kids would perform better on the tests.

 

[Shaihulud]

If they pass students that failed the exam, don't be too surprise to know that employers will simply employ people from other schools that have a more stringent form of grading.

 

[bed_head7]

Maybe if they took the focus of their eductation system off of gay history and culture and put it back to learning useful subjects, like addition and grammar, kids would perform better on the tests.

What in the world are you talking about?

 

[blackheart]

What in the world are you talking about?

He's just trying to troll.

 

[ybbor]

What in the world are you talking about?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=169985

 

[Aramazd]

Being from Denmark and all I'm not too acquainted with the American school system so how old are you approximately, when you take the exam?

You first take it when you are 15 or 16 and you the last time you take it (assuming you haven't already passed) should be 17 or 18.

 

[Leonel]

Of course high school students that failed their exit exam shouldn't be allowed to graduate!

I highly recommend opening a can of STFU and GTFO on anyone that would suggest otherwise!

 

[Bootstoots]

I tend to believe that high school graduates should have a pulse and at least some higher brain function. So no, do not allow people who (repeatedly) fail that test to graduate.