The un-graduates
It’s high school graduation time in metro Atlanta and many will hold ceremonies tonight.
Some seniors won’t graduate because they can’t pass the Georgia High School Graduation Test – a series of exams designed to make sure students learned what the state says they should know in math, science, English and social studies.
About 4,000 high school students fail some part of this test each year. Many will pass on retests but some never will, meaning they will be denied a diploma.
I and other reporters get dozens of emails around this time of years from frustrated parents and students. The State Board of Education will grant waivers in some cases, but many will be denied.
Proponents say the tests — which are not as hard as the End of Course Tests (EOCT) — are a way to guarantee that students leave high school with basic skills to succeed. They say these tests are a way to raise student achievement. (The results are used to comply with No Child Left Behind.)
But critics say exit exams are unfair. They point to statistics showing poor and minority students struggle the most with these tests. Some argue the tests punish the students for faulty or lax teaching. Others say principals and teachers are able to determine without the state’s exam whether a student should graduate.
Should we require students to pass an exam before they earn a high school diploma? What should be on that test?
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59 comments Add your comment
HB
May 26th, 2009
5:19 pm
One test should not make or break a kid. Look at it this way: on the one hand you have 12 years of passing grades, passed end-of-course tests, and approval for promotion by teachers and administrators to the next level; on the other, one failed test. Now the reasons for that result may be social promotion and low grading standards, or it may be test anxiety/poor standardized test-takers. Or even a badly designed test (they do exist). Who really knows? I don’t see how, though, anyone can think that the one test should outweigh everything else and assume that in every case, the test is good and all other measures were bad. That just makes no sense to me, especially since it’s not like a bunch of people who know anything about formal ed and testing got together, designed a plan, and said yes, this one measure should outweigh all the others. It was the state legislature that decided the results from a graduation test would outweigh all other measures before that test was even designed! They felt kids with a h.s. diploma weren’t necessarily learning all that much and decided to “raise standards” by putting in a magic test — the easiest, cheapest way to look like you’re doing something about education. Real reform would be difficult and time-consuming, but implementing a test — that’s easy! And now you’ve made a diploma really mean something!
ScienceTeacher671
May 26th, 2009
8:03 pm
HB, most of the students who can’t graduated because they’ve failed the GHSGT at least four and probably five times have NOT passed End of Course Tests, have not passed the CRCTs, and may have only “passed” their classes due to SST or IEP modifications (or intimidation of teachers by administrators).
There probably is a student somewhere who has such terrible “test anxiety” that he or she can’t pass tests as easy as the CRCT, EOCTs, and GHSGT, but the ones I’ve known who failed were never stellar students to begin with.
ScienceTeacher671
May 26th, 2009
8:04 pm
“can’t graduate”, not “can’t graduated”….obviously I “can’t type”…
HB
May 26th, 2009
9:34 pm
Yeah, I have typing issues too, so apologies in advance for typos that may follow.
If other requirements are missing, to me, that’s a different story, and I’m sure most that fail aren’t good students. That does not, however, justify having such high stakes on one test because there are some kids every year who meet all but that requirement. Every student deserves to have their full record count and not have one test alone determine their fate.
I also agree with what Lee posted about changing the rules late in the game. Maybe these students shouldn’t have been passed by teachers and/or administrators earlier, but they were — is that the student’s fault? To fix the problem of passing kids year after year who don’t know the material and make it look like the diploma means something, the system has taken the lazy, bureaucratic approach of having a test that the end that can fail students where people chose not to. It’s an attempt to change the results to give the appearance of a more rigorous high school experience rather than actually improve the years of education leading up to graduation.
Rosie
May 26th, 2009
11:03 pm
It is interesting kids classified as tenth graders participate in graduation. How is it you skip from tenth to twelfth grade during the last few days of school? How is it kids with less than 16-18 course credits suddenly have enough courses to graduate? A school in my district has a really high graduation rate, but we all know why? Adminstrators in my system are going crazy playing the numbers game.
SET
May 27th, 2009
1:21 pm
We are missing the real point. This exam should be required passed before the “student” is allowed to set foot in HIGH SCHOOL. Those who can’t pass it should come back when they can, or if they age more than a year or two should be locked out of the normal high schools for good and only allowed in other programs.
And by other programs I mean Voc Ed, which should be offered for those who don’t want or can’t cut the mustard in an academic programs.
ShoeShee
May 27th, 2009
3:54 pm
The graduation rates are not equally calculated therefore, the numbers we are given should be suspect. Fortunately, one new part of NCLB will require a consistent method for calculating dropout rates. Hopefully, GA will not cheat the numbers (the new formula requires inputting dropouts from the current graduating class – going back 4 years ” As coded in Student Record”). The code is the caveat, IMO.
Secondly, GA keeps promising that instead of one high stakes graduation test, we will instead use the End of Course Tests over the course of the high school career. These are more valuable in 2 ways – it gives students a chance to work on areas they are deficient in – and it shows us the teachers who are not getting their point across. Hopefully, a component of this will result in culling bad teachers – which would contribute to better graduation rates. In addition, remedial help for students failing EOCT’s along the way in high school, would also serve to improve graduation rates.
ScienceTeacher671
May 27th, 2009
9:24 pm
HB, I agree that students who can’t pass the GHSGT should have been retained and remediated years earlier. I also think that ALL the Georgia tests, from the CRCT through the EOCTs to the GHSGT are too easy for their stated purposes.
I also agree with other posters that we shouldn’t expect all students to go to college, and should provide other avenues, such as vocational education. In fact, I don’t think we should expect all students to go to an academic high school, and agree with an earlier suggestion that students should have to pass a test after 8th grade to be admitted to an academic high school, as they do in many other countries.
echo
May 27th, 2009
10:43 pm
Sometimes low EOCT scores (or CRCT scores) don’t show who “the bad teachers” are as much as they show which teacher has pi$$ed off the administration the most. Many very good teachers get stuck with the worst of the worst because of politics.