The (bi-partisan) Exit Exam Flim-Flam

[Moses]

 <br> www.latimes.com/news/education/la-op-entrytest2jan02,1,6864352.story?coll=la-news-learning

EDUCATION

Exit Exam Flimflam

By John Rogers
John Rogers is associate director of UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education and Access.

January 2, 2005

The California High School Exit Exam is a house of cards that's about to collapse on 100,000 students. Beginning in 2006, no student will receive a public high school diploma without having passed that test. The state's theory behind the exam is that threatening to deny diplomas, even to students who have passed all their courses, will motivate schools to teach better and students to study harder.

Here are some problems with this theory of magical motivation:

•  There is no evidence that such threats work. The experts charged with evaluating the test point to recent (small) improvements in scores, but there is no way they can attribute these improvements to the test threat. Further, many thoughtful teachers believe that the threat distracts from real learning and can even encourage students to drop out.

•  The test covers information the state says students "should" know, even though it may not have been covered in their schools. Part of the plan is that schools will identify students who need help and provide them with the extra opportunities and attention to pass the test. Surely this happens some of the time. But "remediation" is rarely a fair alternative to skilled instruction the first time.

•  It's indecent to punish students for adults' failures to provide adequate opportunities to learn, yet the recently settled Williams vs. California case documents unconscionable schooling inadequacies (undertrained teachers, poor facilities, insufficient books) in schools serving primarily low-income, minority communities across California.

It may occur to you that you've heard these arguments before. Didn't we already settle this exit exam business? Sort of. Two years ago, the state was on the verge of making 2004 the "drop dead" year for passing the exam. But it became clear that educational chaos and human catastrophes were in the making. So the test penalty was postponed until 2006.

Yet structural problems still undermine learning in many California schools. For example, in Los Angeles County, 45 high schools experience at least two of these three fundamental opportunity problems:

•  Serious shortages of qualified teachers (more than 20% not certified by the state).

•  Overcrowded facilities that house twice as many students as the state recommends.

•  Too few courses to allow all students to complete the minimum requirements for California's four-year public universities.

Do these deficiencies matter? It is not a coincidence that students who attend the 45 inadequate schools (and will have attended such schools for their entire education) fail the test at roughly three times the rate of students attending schools that experience none of the problems.

The recent settlement of the Williams suit promises to address many of these problems. The settlement sets standards for teachers, facilities and learning materials; earmarks new state money so that schools can live up to these standards; and creates ways for community members to learn about school conditions and file complaints when problems arise.

But these needed reforms cannot immediately undo the years of substandard education faced by the class of 2006. The exit exam shifts the blame for education-policy failures onto the shoulders of students who have had the fewest opportunities to benefit from good schooling, and it calls that transfer "accountability." Denied diplomas will not make up for denied opportunities.
 <br>Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

[Moses]

Study Offers Grim Look at Schools

In nearly every objective measure of school quality — including funding and academic achievement — California trails national averages, a finding that paints a grim portrait of the state's once-sterling educational system, according to a Rand Corp. study released Monday.

The researchers found that declining per-pupil funding, growing enrollments, relatively flat teacher salaries and large classes have undercut the state's efforts to improve public education.

Even a reform that was meant to boost achievement — reducing the size of classes in kindergarten through third grade — spawned an unintended consequence of bringing legions of inexperienced teachers to schools, particularly those serving low-income and minority children.

The report did not offer recommendations to address the problems. But its lead author said the state should consider systemic solutions rather than piecemeal remedies — an approach that would require huge sums of money as Sacramento grapples with a multibillion-dollar budget shortfall.

"The system as a whole has problems," said Stephen Carroll, a Rand senior economist who warned against inaction.

"The economy in the future is going to depend on the quality of the workforce," he said. "We're not developing a workforce that is going to be competitive with other states."

The Rand report underscored that concern, saying that:

• California's fourth- and eighth-graders since 1990 have consistently scored lower on reading and math tests than most of their peers across the country, including those in Texas, New York and Illinois; during this time, the average reading and math scores ranked California above only Mississippi and Louisiana.

• Teachers without full credentials accounted for about 15% of California's 287,000 teachers in the 1999-2000 school year. These inexperienced teachers were disproportionately concentrated in schools serving low-income and minority students.

• Teacher pay falls below the national average when salaries are adjusted for the high cost of living in California. The outlook appears more positive when teacher pay is viewed in raw dollars: In the 1999-2000 school year, teachers with a bachelor's degree but no experience earned nearly $30,000 on average; those at the top of the salary schedule earned on average more than $56,000. Those figures put the state in the top 10, but they fell short when cost-of-living adjustments were factored in.

• California spends less per pupil on school construction than the nation and such other large industrial states as Texas and Florida. Still, it has made progress over the last decade in building and repairing schools; voters approved more than $11 billion in state school construction bonds in 2002 and nearly $10 billion more in local bonds.

• Though California schools began reducing class sizes in kindergarten through third grade in 1997, the state still had the second highest overall student-teacher ratio in the nation in the 1999-2000 school year; California's classrooms had nearly 21 students per teacher, compared to 16 per teacher nationally.

California's education leaders acknowledged the problems cited by the Rand report, saying the state has shortchanged students.

"It is clear that without additional investment in quality instruction and student support, we cannot expect to restore California to its status among the top-achieving states," said state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell. "Nor can we expect to close the achievement gap that leaves low-income students, Latino and African American students lagging behind their peers."

O'Connell and the head of the state Assembly's Education Committee said that California's school finance system should be overhauled so that more money reaches the neediest students.

"The report says that we have abandoned a high-quality education system as a goal," said Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles), who also called for raising the minimum wage and expanded healthcare coverage for poor families, which she said would help keep students in school.

"Education is not either a Democratic or Republican issue," Goldberg said. "It's an issue of whether we want to make a commitment to the kids of the state."

California is home to more than 6 million public school students — or nearly 13% of the nation's school-age children. A growing portion of these students come from low-income families or are immigrants who are still learning English.

To improve its schools, California has adopted tough academic standards in recent years, and schools now gear classroom instruction and teacher training toward these standards.

The state also has spent more than $50 billion annually on education, according to the Rand report — accounting for the biggest single expense in the budget.

The Rand researchers traced many of California's educational problems to Proposition 13, the 1978 voter initiative that set limits on annual property tax increases and fundamentally altered the way schools were funded.

Before Proposition 13, school districts raised funds by setting local tax rates with voter approval. Proposition 13 switched that function to the state. A subsequent voter initiative, Proposition 98, required the state to set minimum spending levels to protect education in lean times.

Even so, since the late 1970s, per-pupil spending has consistently fallen below the national average, the Rand researchers found. Funding has varied as the state economy has fluctuated.

"Proposition 13 has been a good deal for property taxpayers," said Paul Goldfinger, vice president of School Services of California, a private school-finance consulting firm in Sacramento. "But [it] has not been a good deal for schools."


— Duke Helfand
Los Angeles Times
2005-01-04
www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-schools4jan04,1,599237.story?coll=la-news-learning

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Ohanian Comment: The real question here is whether golden staters will relinquish some of their gold and pay for public education--and raise the minimum wage. As I keep shouting, publication education is inextricably linked to a living wage. As I type this, I sit in my northern California home town, a sleepy farming village until a decade or so ago when an expansion boom hit. Now the population is booming along with housing costs. The average house is valued at $400,000. Where wheat fields and fruit orchards once abounded, upscale housing developments, senior villages, and shopping malls crowd for space. And guess what? None of these groups wants to pay for public education. And their personal assets are protected by Proposition 13.

I pay much higher taxes in Vermont than any of these people in their ersatz mansions. California's answer to the education crisis is tougher standards and no high school diploma without passing a one-size-fits-all test. One of Vermont's answers, thanks to former Governor Howard Dean, is universal health care for children.