The Examiner probes graduation requirements

The Examiner's Bonnie Elsinger has published a trio of articles about the high school exit exam controversy:

• District attempts to help failing ’07 seniors pass test

  Twenty percent of the incoming senior class within the San Francisco Unified School District — a total of 882 students — have failed the state’s exit exam — a standardized test that public school students are required to pass in order to get a diploma.
  
  Those students will be integrated into a “districtwide initiative” to help pass the test by their June 2007 graduation, according to San Francisco’s assistant superintendent of high schools, Margaret Chiu. Students who have not passed the high-stakes test are given extra test tutoring during an elective period or after school, she said.

• Exit exam opponents won’t give up legal fight

  “The bottom line is we are not going away and neither is the lawsuit,”

• Nonpassing students still get pomp, piece of paper

  Several hundred San Francisco public school students who did not pass the state's required exit exam were still given permission to don a cap and gown and participate in graduation ceremonies, although they were not given a diploma. Instead, they were given a "certificate of completion," a provision approved by the school board just months before graduation.

The last of these articles also posted a breakdown of how many students were denied a diploma because of CAHSEE and how many had not met other requirements:

• 4,404 Senior students in the 2005-06 school year in SFUSD
• 3,988 Senior students who passed the California exit exam by June 2006
• 416 Senior students who did not pass the California exit exam
• 226 Senior students who did not pass the exit exam, but achieved grades, credits to graduate
• 190 Senior students who did not pass the exit exam, did not have grades, credits to graduate
• 184 Last year's senior students who did not pass exit exam, did not have grades, credits to graduate and re-enrolled for the 2006-07 school yea

Roughly 5% of seniors were denied a diploma because they failed CAHSEE. The other students who failed to pass had not met other requirements and would not have received a diploma. This appears to confirm my suspicion that opponents of CAHSEE are inflating its impact. Maybe less energy should be spent fighting CAHSEE and more energy should be directed towards helping struggling students. A heretical idea, I'm sure.