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News & Notes School Board Fails Its Students | School Board Fails Its Students |
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The West Contra Costa County school board votes down an alternative proposal to the California Exit Exam angering students of color and their parents. By Lisa Gray-Garcia, ColorLines RaceWire April 13, 2006 On Monday April 10, the West Contra Costa Unified School District voted no on a proposal that would have acted as an alternative to the California High School Exit Exam, also known as CAHSEE. The proposal included granting high school diplomas to students in the district who successfully met all of their high school requirements and completed a Senior Year Demonstration project even if they did not pass the exit exam. The Senior Year Demonstration project would include a rigorous combination of portfolios, research and presentations. Hundreds of students, parents, teachers and advocates spoke in favor of the proposal in the packed two hour meeting of the school board, while only a handful of mostly white administrators, businesspeople and residents of other parts of the county spoke in opposition. "We are not a diploma mill. We don't just give them away," said school board member Karen Pfeifer, who opposed the proposal. "You earn them." According to Multiple Measures: Approaches to High School Graduation published by the School Redesign Network at Stanford University, alternatives such as the proposed demonstration project are being enthusiastically embraced by several states such as Oregon, Vermont, Washington and Maine. The Stanford study found that rather than being detrimental to student learning, alternatives such as the Senior Year Demonstration encourages an ambitious range of thinking and performance skills in students who participate. "Teaching is not testing," said Olivia Araiza, program director of Justice Matters, a research and policy institute that works on creating racially just schools for low-income students of color. "The only thing we know for sure that the exit exam is doing is that it is creating a state-sanctioned underclass by denying hard working, smart students of color their diploma." Statewide, 33 percent of low-income students, 49 percent of English language learners, 32 percent Latino students, and 37 percent of African-American students have not passed the exit exam. "I had to take a test to graduate," said Al Kirkman, a coach at Pinole Valley High. "You had to take a test to become a nurse, and you had to pass the bar to become a lawyer." He concluded by saying that students who do not pass should be held back. But students vehemently disagree. "I have completed all my classes, I got good grades, and yet I still cant get a diploma," said Trina Montgomery, 17, a high school student in the district. Parents also voiced their concerns including Rochelle Spence, whose children are students in the district. "The exit exam is a distraction that takes us away from the crisis that exists in student learning, which is what we need to focus on before we institute more tests." As the final vote was taken, Board members Karen Leong Fenton and Charles Ramsey noted that the district would have to abide by state law. This may have been a reference to State Superintendent Jack O'Connell, who had threatened legal action against any school district that does not enforce the testing requirement. Lisa Gray-Garcia is the editor of POOR Magazine/PoorNewsNetwork as well as the Media and Public Education Director of Justice Matters. |
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