BY-NC-SA For many, senior year in high school means SATs, college applications, graduation, prom, and most importantly making sure you’ve passed the exit exam. According to state officials, students are handling their business better than before. In fact, 94 percent of seniors passed the exam by the end of their senior year, up three percent from 2006.
The state data also showed an improvement in minority groups, African American, Hispanics and “economically poor” students. Ninety percent of those students passed the exam. Beginning sophomore year, students have eight chances to pass the test, which is made up of Mathematics and English - language arts at the 10th-grade level.
Some may argue that the test is pointless or easy, but whatever the case may be, students are passing in greater numbers, well at least in certain places.
Oakland’s passing rate is lower than the state average. Eighty percent of students from the class of 2010 passed the exam. Troy Flint, spokesman for the Oakland Unified School District told the San Francisco Chronicle that the low passing rate is do to a new district policy that promotes students by age, not by the number of credits earned. In other words, many students weren’t academically ready to be in the 12th grade, but if they weren’t “promoted” they would be too old to be in high school, so they were promoted anyway.
Sixty percent of 10th graders in Oakland passed the English section the first time they took the exam. This number has not change in past two years. However, there was decrease in the number of students passing the math section. In 2010 58 percent of students passed the math section, a five percent drop from 2009.
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