Have public high schools become diploma mills now?

[alp227]

"http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/education/12exit.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all">States Lower Test Standards for a High School Diploma": Ian Urbina of The New York Times reports that Pennsylvania and 25 other states have lowered high school exit exam standards because the states were concerned that by their previous standards too many students would fail.

Preview:

A law adopting statewide high school exams for graduation took effect in Pennsylvania on Saturday, with the goal of ensuring that students leaving high school are prepared for college and the workplace. But critics say the requirement has been so watered down that it is unlikely to have major impact.

The situation in Pennsylvania mirrors what has happened in many of the 26 states that have adopted high school exit exams. As deadlines approached for schools to start making passage of the exams a requirement for graduation, and practice tests indicated that large numbers of students would fail, many states softened standards, delayed the requirement or added alternative paths to a diploma.

People who have studied the exams, which affect two-thirds of the nation’s public school students, say they often fall short of officials’ ambitious goals.

“The real pattern in states has been that the standards are lowered so much that the exams end up not benefiting students who pass them while still hurting the students who fail them,” said John Robert Warren, an expert on exit exams and a professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

[frazzled]

1. I am not a fan of the exams

I agree with the professor who said they end up "not benefiting students who pass them while still hurting the students who fail them."

I speak from the perspective of a mother of a student who didn't need to take it ... and as someone who devoted several years to tutoring kids who were struggling to pass it.

The tests as I knew them some years ago in Minnesota were horridly discriminatory to non-native speakers. As but one example: I worked for months with a Vietnamese girl, who was struggling in her English but working hard and making progress. A few days before the exam, the teacher gave me the previous year's reading test to give her. I looked at it and was shocked. She looked at it and was dejected. There were two passages, both newspaper "editorials": one was by a doctor and was about the perils of "lo-fat Twinkies"; the other was about a "knotty-pine den." Can you fucking imagine being from Vietnam and trying to figure out what a Twinkie or knotty-pine is? I didn't see the girl till some months later, and asked her how her test had gone: she was thinking of dropping out of school. This is unsupportable.

I proctored the math part of the exam one year, and a southeast Asian boy raised his hand to see if I could answer a question. No questions were really allowed, so I looked at the teacher and she said, basically: why the hell not. Well, he had a question about a story problem. It stated that "eight of ten students at Foley High School did thus and such." And then asked for a percentage. He wanted to know what the "of" meant. Did it mean 8 did and 2 didn't? He clearly knew the math part--his English was not steady enough to be sure of the question being asked. It breaks my heart.

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. Seems a though there are two extremes, the all AP track & the your life is over track.

The trouble is the all AP track is just as worthless as far as actually learning anything.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. OTOH schools risk losing federal funding with NCLB if scores go too low.

No money, no school

[greennina]

4. When the teachers stopped trying...

that's when they became diploma mills. Out of the ~45 teachers I had growing up, not a one even tried.

[Smarmie Doofus]

6. Maybe its the other way around:

>>>>When the teachers stopped trying...

that's when they became diploma mills.>>>>>



>>>> Out of the ~45 teachers I had growing up, not a one even tried.>>>>>>>

Wow. Not *one*?

Out of *forty-five*!?


Come on now.

[donco6]

7. Yeah, we heard. n/t

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. Yeah right

:eyes:

[Catshrink]

10. So? How hard did you try?

Did you take responsibility for your education or just sit back and whine?

[Kerrytravelers]

11. Why do I get the strong sense that they just grew tired of arguing with you.

They're teachers. Not miracle workers. At some point, if a student doesn't want to learn, a teacher will say "fine" and focus on those who do. They can't *make* you do anything. Honestly, they have more than one student to focus on all day long.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

5. You can graduate from one, college track and be no where near ready for college

And I see those kids daily.

[donco6]

8. We don't have exit exams.

And if we were a diploma mill, we'd automatically graduate all of our students. We don't.