yolland
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Deja vu........?
Lawsuit filed over exit exam
by JULIET WILLIAMS
The Associated Press
February 9, 2005
SACRAMENTO — A group of high school seniors and their parents filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the state Department of Education and school Superintendent Jack O’Connell, claiming the California high school exit exam is illegal and discriminatory.
Lead attorney Arturo Gonzalez said the lawsuit likely will expand to represent tens of thousands of students who have met all local requirements to graduate except passing both parts of the test. "Many students in California have not been given a fair opportunity to learn the material on the exam,” Gonzalez said. “These are good kids who have worked hard for 13 years to pass their courses. For the very first time we are telling them they do not get a diploma unless they pass an exit exam. We think that is unfair, we think it's unwise and we think it is illegal."
Students in the class of 2006 are the first required to pass the two-part English and math test to receive a diploma. At the start of this school year, about 100,000 seniors had not passed at least one of the sections — more than one-fifth of the state’s roughly 450,000 high school seniors. State officials have said they do not have updated figures, but they believe the number is much lower now.
Gonzalez said the state failed to study alternatives for students who could not pass the test, particularly English-learners, as the legislation required when lawmakers approved the exam in 1999. The lawsuit also claims the state is denying some students their fundamental right to an equal education.
It was filed in San Francisco County Superior Court, and names 10 students and their parents as plaintiffs. Defendants also include the state of California and the state Board of Education.
Liliana Valenzuela, a plaintiff and a senior at Richmond High School in the San Francisco Bay area, has a 3.84 grade-point average and is 12th in her class of 413, according to the lawsuit. She said she passed the math portion of the test on her first try but has been unable to pass the English section. “I have been working really hard to go to college,” Valenzuela said Wednesday during a news conference. “I have been on the honor roll for the last four years. ... I really wanted to wear my cap and gown.”
"Basically this test stands for, 'Go to school for four years, work hard, stay out of trouble, get passing grades, but, by the way, if you don't pass, all your efforts stood for nothing,' " said Nora Sellman, whose son Alex has repeatedly failed the math portion of the exam.
But Carolina Burachek, 15, a junior at Rio Linda High School in Rio Linda, a Sacramento suburb, said schools need a way to measure whether students are prepared for college. "They have to set a standard for everybody. ... You can’t have a certain test for one person but a different one for someone else,” said Burachek, who passed both sections on her first try.
Gonzalez said he will seek a court injunction to delay the consequences of the exam for students in this year’s class. The lawsuit argues that the state has no compelling reason to deny students their diplomas and that doing so serves no public interest.
Department of Education spokeswoman Hilary McLean said she had no immediate comment on the lawsuit because department officials had not seen it. "We would argue that it’s more unfair to hand them a diploma that doesn’t mean anything and doesn’t arm them with the skills and knowledge they’ll need,” McLean said. [Yes, that's actually what the text reads...apparently some editor was snoozing on the job and missed the contradiction.--yolland]
Superintendent O’Connell, who helped write the exit exam legislation, said last month that he had considered alternative assessments for students who fail to pass the exam before deciding against them. The state held a public hearing in December to take comments on its options. O’Connell has said students who fail the exam can take another year of high school, get extra tutoring, enroll in summer school or attend community college until they pass. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger included $40 million for tutorial programs in his budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
Earlier this month, the state settled another exit exam lawsuit by agreeing to give special education students a one-year waiver on the requirement.
Nationwide, 23 states have graduation exams and four more are phasing them in by 2012, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Center on Education Policy. Most states offer options for students with special needs and those who are learning English, center president Jack Jennings said. Nearly all have confronted the same problems as California.
Jennings said if states want to test students in English, they’ll have to do a better job teaching it. "We’ll have to find some way to teach everybody English, including those who just come into the country from another country,” he said. “Otherwise, it makes no sense. How would you like to be tested in Armenian if you don’t know Armenian?”
He said most states want to make the academic standards and the exams more rigorous, but most only measure at about a 10th-grade level. California’s exam tests 10th-grade English, ninth-grade math and level-one algebra. Students need to answer 60 percent of the questions correctly to pass each section.
Carlos Legaspi, a senior at Rio Linda High whose family emigrated from Mexico when he was a child, said he can understand how the test might be hard for students who don’t speak English. But he said it’s still a reasonable expectation, especially because most schools have tutoring programs available. Legaspi said he passed both sections on his first try. "I don’t know how it discriminates,” he said. “It’s just a test.”
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