Budget Conference Committee goes after CAHSEE
In an update distributed by the California Education Technology Professionals Association (CETPA) regarding the votes in the budget conference committee, the group from both legislative bodies that is charged with reconciling the various versions of the budget, there was a very, very troubling item:
On partisan votes (Democrats supporting and Republicans opposing) approved the
following:
1. Graduation Requirements for the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE).
Eliminates statute that ties CAHSEE passage to graduation requirements. Would
continue to use CAHSEE to satisfy NCLB requirements, but limit CAHSEE to one test
administration.
As I read this, the CAHSEE would still be administered once a year, but it would no longer be required for high school graduation. These democratic legislators are using the budget crisis as an excuse to remove one of the few real “bars” of California’s public school accountability system. So much of “accountability” in California is really just smoke and mirrors. For example, the Academic Performance Index (API) or the “consequences” for Program Improvement schools.
The CAHSEE provides a minimum level of achievement, and I do mean minimum since it only addressed 7th/8th grade math and 10th grade language arts standards with 55%/60% passing criteria, that all high school students must achieve in order to receive a high school diploma. Without the CAHSEE, high school diplomas aren’t really worth much. A student could barely squeak by, year after year and so long as he/she passed the required classes with a D, they’d graduate even though they were at the far below basic level of proficiency on the California Standards Test (CST). Without the CAHSEE the only connection between achieving the standards and graduation is administered by teachers in the classroom and reflected by grades. Research has shown that grade inflation is common. Impartial measures such as the CAHSEE or the CST provide a more accurate assessment of a student’s academic achievement than grades.
The extremely high rates of remediation of our college freshman make it clear that even the CAHSEE isn’t enough of a “bar” for students to achieve in order to be ready for college level work. Removing this minimal bar of the CAHSEE is only going to exacerbate the remediation problem. The last figure I heard was that the California State University system alone spent more than $30M on remediation, not to mention the cost of the extra year(s) of college that it means for those unprepared students as they attempt to complete their college degrees. Add the cost of that remediation done by community colleges, UC and private employers and you have a huge financial burden.
The relatively low cost of the CAHSEE administration, makes this “cost-saving” measure of eliminating all but one test administration and removing the CAHSEE as a graduation rate a poor source of actual budget savings. The damage it will do to our public education system will far outweigh the minimal cost savings.
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