HIGH SCHOOL EXIT EXAM IS COMMON SENSE TROUBLING PASS RATES ARE NO REASON TO THROW AWAY VITAL EVALUATION TOOL.

Byline: Doug Lasken Local View

WHEN the largest school district in the state - Los Angeles Unified - voted in April to support a moratorium on the high school exit exam, it brought to center stage one of the most important educational debates we have seen in several years.

It involves all the big questions: What are our public schools supposed to be doing? Are they doing these things? What should be the consequences of failure?

The exit exam, mandated by a state law passed in 1999, tests academic material roughly set at 10th grade level. Starting next year, unless the law is changed, students must pass it to receive a diploma.

With the deadline so near, harsh realities have come into focus.

As one recent report points out, more than 172,000 juniors - 38 percent of the class of 2004 - have not yet passed the math portion of the exam. On the English portion, more than 86,000 juniors - 19 percent of the class - have not passed.

More troubling still, pass rates on the language arts section for the class of 2004 are: All students, 81 percent; economically disadvantaged, 79 percent; non-native ``English language learners,'' 54 percent.

It's no wonder that grass-roots groups are campaigning against the exam since its impact is clearly hardest on underprivileged students.

But what do we do after a moratorium?

It might help to review why the exit exam was enacted. To put it bluntly, it had become clear that high school graduates in California did not know what they were supposed to know.

A statewide comparison of reading scores from 1999 to 2000 (available on the California Department of Education Web site) showed a slight improvement in middle schools, but zero improvement in high schools.

Scores for 2000 revealed native English-speaking students stalled around the 40th percentile, which means that 60 percent of the nation's high school students scored higher.

The figures for English-language learners were worse, stalled around the 4th percentile or below, which is functionally illiterate.

Adding to the pressure, the California state universities began to report that up to 50 percent of incoming freshmen required remedial English.

Recent reforms, specifically English language interventions for English- language learning students (denied English before the 1997 passage of Proposition 227) and well-researched phonics programs for students denied phonics during the ``whole language'' movement of the 1980s, have raised scores in elementary schools, but the benefits have not yet reached the secondary schools.

We don't know what is coming, but it seems a safe bet that, while we will probably have somewhat better-educated seniors three years from now, we will still be far away from where we should be. What will we do then?

For starters, we should continue to recognize that testing is necessary.

The groups now opposing the exit exam tend toward an anti-testing mind-set. There are charges that the exam is unfair because low-scoring students receive substandard instruction.

These charges diminish in credibility when one reads released test items, which are available online on the California Department of Education Web site. Here is a typical sample from the language arts section:

Choose the best word or words to complete the following sentence:

``Which of the three Olympic runners is the -------?'' the spectator asked the judge.

A. more fast

B. fastest

C. most fastest

D. most faster

Some children have the advantage of acquiring standard English at home, but there is not a teacher in the state who will agree that comparatives and superlatives are not taught in school, at least in the last five years. If seniors have not learned these forms, it is unlikely that lack of exposure is a significant cause.

It should also be noted that a moratorium on the exit exam will remove one of the few incentives our at-risk students have to study hard. The current statewide standardized test, the CAT6, ``high stakes'' though it may be for school staff, does not motivate students, who know it affects neither report cards nor graduation.

Testing, when done right, is an extension of instruction. Students, parents, colleges and employers need to know if instruction is working.

As for the high school diploma, although it is not practical to abruptly deny graduation to tens of thousands of seniors, we can modify the diploma itself, with levels of achievement indicated.

It does no one any good to certify someone who cannot pass a test as basic as the California High School Exit Exam with the same document as someone who can pass it.

The moratorium on the exam will probably be enacted. Let's not have a moratorium on common sense too.