It's always amazed me that Nevada's high school exit exam is given to students during their sophomore year.
If students are expected to pass the high school exit exam after being in high school less than two years, three things come to mind.
One, the test isn't that difficult.
Two, what are students learning for the next two years, if they've passed a high school proficiency exam?
Three, if you can't pass an exam given to sophomores, you shouldn't be getting a high school diploma, which implies four, not two, years of learning.
Given these circumstances, it's unbelievable that some in the Legislature want to dumb down the graduation requirements.
If you can't pass a sophomore-level test in the basic areas of math, science, reading and writing, you have no business graduating from high school, even if your combined average would be a passing grade.
What's tragic here is that the ones who are really hurt by this are Nevada's students. By not being honest with students, you allow them to leave high school thinking they have skills and abilities they don't have. It might stress a student out to have to study, practice and drill to retake a test, but the alternative is a student with significantly fewer skills than are necessary to get a job or succeed in college.
With over 34 percent of Nevada's high school graduates having to take remedial courses in college, Nevada should be raising, not lowering, its academic standards.
If students are expected to pass the high school exit exam after being in high school less than two years, three things come to mind.
One, the test isn't that difficult.
Two, what are students learning for the next two years, if they've passed a high school proficiency exam?
Three, if you can't pass an exam given to sophomores, you shouldn't be getting a high school diploma, which implies four, not two, years of learning.
Given these circumstances, it's unbelievable that some in the Legislature want to dumb down the graduation requirements.
Nevada law currently requires seniors to pass four high-stakes exams to earn a diploma: math, science, reading and writing. ...Sen. Denis' claim notwithstanding, this is all about watering down the test.
Assembly Bill 456, approved Wednesday by the state Senate, would allow certain high school students to receive diplomas even if they fail a portion of the high school proficiency exam.
"This is not about watering down the test," said state Sen. Mo Denis, D-Las Vegas, chairman of the Senate Education Committee.
It's about helping the borderline cases, the students who are just missing the mark on the tests and who would otherwise graduate, Denis explained.
If you can't pass a sophomore-level test in the basic areas of math, science, reading and writing, you have no business graduating from high school, even if your combined average would be a passing grade.
What's tragic here is that the ones who are really hurt by this are Nevada's students. By not being honest with students, you allow them to leave high school thinking they have skills and abilities they don't have. It might stress a student out to have to study, practice and drill to retake a test, but the alternative is a student with significantly fewer skills than are necessary to get a job or succeed in college.
With over 34 percent of Nevada's high school graduates having to take remedial courses in college, Nevada should be raising, not lowering, its academic standards.
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3 comments:
The reason these public school kids are "borderline" is because of grade inflation! Teachers often just don't have the heart to give the honest grade but the high school proficiency exams reveal that the borderline student doesn't even have the basic knowledge a 10th grader should have mastered. We also see grade inflation with the Millennium Scholarship. Every time the Legislature has raised the GPA requirement to qualify for the scholarship (because the original bar was set too low and the program is going broke) the same number of public school students qualified. On top of that the Universities say that many p.s. students who qualify for the M.S. end up in remedial courses. Homeschooled students must qualify for the M.S. based on their ACT or SAT score which the Board of Regents set as the same score required for admission to UNR or UNLV (they believed homeschool parents would inflate grades so they use college entrance exam scores as the qualification bar). My question is, why aren't Public & Private School students held to the same standard to qualify for the M.S. as homeschooled students?
Personally, the proficiency exams a huge waste of time and money. Teachers teach to the test, it takes a lot of time each year to administer the test and the students lose about a week of school because of the test.
Further, it costs many millions to set write, send out, administer, collect and score the tests. Millions that can be reinvested into the schools or sent back to the taxpayers.
Finally, the tests really don't prove anything other than the students are good test takers.
Only half of states in United States require high school proficiency tests to graduate. For instance, Utah boasts a 75 percent graduation rate, yet has no exit exam. The same student, failing in Nevada, can receive a diploma in Utah if they transfer, based on their credits, alone. I agree that the proficiency test is a waste of time and money, when it hold little weight, nationwide, on the merit of how much the child has actually learned in school.
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