FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 7, 2015
Contact: Isabel Alegría, 415-431-7434, ialegria@publicadvocates.org or John Affeldt at jaffeldt@publicadvocates.org
Bill allows California schools to award diplomas retroactively to students who met graduation requirements but failed the CA High School Exit Exam
Statement by John Affeldt, Managing Attorney, Public Advocates on SB 172 (Liu):
“We applaud Governor Brown’s signing SB 172 (Liu) today which will allow all students who have otherwise completed high school graduation requirements but for passing the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) to receive their diplomas. This change in law will date back to the class of 2006 when the diploma penalty first took effect.
It’s time to move on from the exit exam. It’s time instead to embrace California’s more meaningful common core standards in English and Math with which the CAHSEE is not aligned. And it’s time to adopt a new multiple-measures accountability system that will actually hold schools and districts accountable first for keeping all students on track to graduate college and career ready—rather than relying on a single end point measure to penalize students whom the system has failed.
It’s time for California to adopt an accountability system where the single largest consequence is not one visited upon students, but one that drives the adults in the system to deliver to all a high quality education.
In the summer of 2003, over 300 hundred low-income students of color and advocates, led by Californians for Justice, Public Advocates and other organizations in the Campaign for Quality Education successfully argued before the State Board of Education for a two year delay in the diploma requirement. The students did not testify against a diploma requirement. They testified against having an expedient and punitive accountability consequence visited upon them before the adults in the system had been held accountable for providing a quality education. When then State Board of Education President Reed Hastings proposed an alternative scoring method for the exam which would have passed more students, the student groups rejected it. They didn’t want to pass by manipulation—they wanted an education. President Hastings said that day that the students’ testimony was the most powerful he had seen in his tenure on the Board.
Since the diploma penalty took effect in 2006, research from Professor Sean Reardon at Stanford confirmed that the CAHSEE did not motivate students to “work harder” as promised but, instead, principally resulted in keeping more students of color and other disadvantaged students from graduating and moving on with their lives. It’s time we moved on from the exit exam.
We look forward to continuing to work with the State Board of Education and the legislature as the new Local Control Funding Formula and the new accountability system it calls for is shaped and implemented.”
Public Advocates Inc. is a non-profit law firm and advocacy organization that challenges the systemic causes of poverty and racial discrimination by strengthening community voices in public policy and achieving tangible legal victories advancing education, housing and transit equity. For more information, see www.publicadvocates.org.
