If 13 years isn’t a fair opportunity, I’d like someone to define what would be.
Go to school. Pay attention. Do your homework. If you don’t understand, ask for help. Demonstrate proficiency. Is that an onerous request?
Recalling my time in corporate America and attempting to read, nay- decipher job applications, we’ve got to improve the skill set of the average graduate, or become accustomed to the increasing temperature within the educational handbasket.
What happens if the students do display proficiency and get told they’re wrong, their grades marked down for offering a correct answer that the teacher’s too careless or ignorant to accept?
Just this evening, one of my proofreading clients called to double-check a couple of things before firing off a protest to her young son’s teacher. Two items on a test paper he’d written had been scored – heavily slashed with big red marks, in fact – as wrong when they weren’t.
“The writers’ convention” – teacher insisted it should be apostrophe s. Though how a single person can hold a convention I can’t fathom.
“I go there every day” – teacher insisted it should be one word. As an adjective modifying a noun? Yes. In this usage? Hell, no.
Nitpicking? The kid’s going to be taking a big test next week in which stuff like this will weigh heavily. If these sort of blatantly wrong marks are typical of his teacher, what’ll that do to his grades? Or his confidence? What does that say about the quality of the teaching he’s getting?
Which is not to say that the lawsuit cited is anything but asinine; only that students’ inability to write correctly and coherently may not be entirely their fault.
The tests are all multiple choice, Scantron sheets. There is zero writing involved. My sophomores just finished taking them Wednesday. They test at the 8th Grade level, so if you can’t pass it, you don’t deserve a diploma.
Anyone who fails a section is given repeated chances to take it again, and remedial classes to help.
You might have a point if the students in question comprised a significant portion of the total number of students, or even if they were all in the same class with the same teacher at all times, but that’s not the case here.
The rest of their class managed to pass the same standardized test (I assume, because they’re not suing), the vast majority of students throughout the state will pass this test, but they couldn’t.
Sometimes it’s better to tell them that they’re dumber than a bag of hammers and give them the chance to try again then to throw them out in the water and watch them sink like rocks.
Are you sure? I’m pretty sure the CAHSEE has a writing portion. In fact, the one I took had a writing portion.
< Total anecdote >
I was in the first class that they tested the CAHSEE on. Now, the test wasn’t going to determine whether or not we graduated (the class after us -2005- got that privilege), but we had to take it anyway.
I remember the math portion not even being at algebra level- mostly adding, subtracting, multiplication, and some long division.
But the essay; oh, how I loved the essay. The topic was something like, “Write a letter to a student in another country and tell them all about American culture.” Knowing it counted for nothing and being pissed about my time being wasted, I wrote a lovely essay full of misspellings, poor grammar, and horrible, horrible slang. I distinctly recall one sentence I wrote, “Sumtimz people where blang blang- thats wut the ghetto people call jewl-- jewl— sparky necklaces and stuf.” Seriously.
A few months later, I was awarded special recognition during a big, fancy assembly. Apparently, with the previously mentioned essay, I would have passed the exit exam with FLYING colors. Oh, I also got a $2000 scholarship from the Governor and a letter signed by him.
From my experience: if you can’t pass the exit exam. . . just stay in high school. Please.
Oh and I do realize they probably tweaked the test after my year, so it is entirely possible that there is no writing portion.
I’m the assis. coach for a forensics team and the head coach is an English teacher. He was telling me that the school now has a rule that the kids have to write at least one out of class essay a week and, on top of that, they are required to write two pages in class each day. All of this is to prep for the CAHSEE. That’s why I figured the test was still like when I took it.
They beefed up the test, starting in 2001, which was offered to volunteer ninth graders (class of 2004).
“The mathematics part of the CAHSEE addresses state standards in grades six and seven and Algebra I. The exam includes statistics, data analysis and probability, number sense, measurement and geometry, mathematical reasoning, and algebra”
"The ELA (English-language arts) part addresses state content standards through grade ten. In reading, this includes vocabulary, decoding, comprehension, and analysis of information and literary texts. In writing, this covers writing strategies, applications, and the conventions of English (e.g. grammar, spelling, and punctuation). "
One nitpick, Measure for Measure, I know every person in my class (somewhere around 600 kids) was forced to take the CAHSEE that year (we were the “volunteer year”). That seems to be a school thing, not state wide though.
Without question there are poor teachers-those who foster little desire to learn, but that’s only a reason for reduced performance in a given year in one subject area-it’s not an impediment over the student’s entire school experience.
If anything, citing a poor teacher is all the more reason to raise standards for youngsters seeking to graduate-from that class will come the next generation of teachers.
This is the part I was wondering about. How in the world could a test be discriminatory? You either know english and math, or you don’t. If you don’t, then you haven’t done the work required to graduate.
The illegal part, I have no idea. IANAL, so maybe it could be. But I doubt it without more evidence.
There are way too many DAMNED stupid people out there. I don’t know if making people test out of H.S is the answer or not, but it’s gotta be better than the coddling “think of the children” attitude that’s been so much more the norm the last couple of decades.
We have a student at my school who just moved here from England. She took the CAHSEE yesterday and the day before, and was apparently very confused by one aspect of it. The way she was taught, “x” means to multiply and “x” (it should look quite stylized, almost like “)(”) is a variable. On the exam, they use a dot to indicate multiplication, and she had no idea what they meant.
I’m guessing she still passes, for the same reason DiosaBellissima did.
My only problem with the exam is that it’s so easy you’d have to TRY to fail it. Either make it hard enough that it actually shows something about students’ abilities, or get rid of it.
Would it be out of the question to sue the people in the OP for wasting the courts’ time? Please?
Heck, why should lowly students complain about having to pass a test in order to grad-jee-ate?
Some teachers have been averse to members of their own profession being tested.
And there’s always the infamous Superintendent of Schools of Lawrence Massachusetts who failed his English competency test three times:
The ejakayshunal sistem of 'Merica is something less than spectacular isn’t it?