Posted 10:56 PM by Floyd

Here is one thing I dislike about America's big-city newspapers: Ethnic columnists. The San Jose Mercury News has a Latino ethnic columnist named Joe Rodriguez, who normally writes an occasional essay on how this or that town has a lot of Latinos who are gaining political prominence. In today's Mercury News he got off that hobby horse and decided to crusade for ignorance:

Hopes are dashed by state exit exam
By Joe Rodriguez
Mercury News

AFTER three years in high school, Sandra Yanez should be starting her summer of endless possibilities. There are college brochures to sort through, trips to the beach with girlfriends, maybe a few thoughts on a dress for the senior prom.

``I'm thinking of dropping out, instead,'' the 17-year-old junior at Oakland Technical high school said the other day.

Well, that would leave her more time for beaches and dresses.

Posted on Tue, Jun. 10, 2003

Hopes are dashed by state exit exam
By Joe Rodriguez
Mercury News

AFTER three years in high school, Sandra Yanez should be starting her summer of endless possibilities. There are college brochures to sort through, trips to the beach with girlfriends, maybe a few thoughts on a dress for the senior prom.

``I'm thinking of dropping out, instead,'' the 17-year-old junior at Oakland Technical high school said the other day.

She's failed the math portion of California's new high school exit examination four times.

``I feel, what am I going to do? I don't want to spend my last year of high school afraid of this test, afraid of panicking,'' she said, ``I feel embarrassed. Maybe I'm dumb.''

Forty percent of California students taking the exit test are failing, and we know where to find the concentration of failure. In fact, we always knew -- at overwhelmed urban high schools fed by elementary and middle schools in the poorest parts of the state.

Lots of urban, working class Latino students are among them, but Sandra is one of the few who hasn't retreated into silent acquiescence.

``Sandra's very angry,'' said Carmen Iniquez, an organizer with the Californians for Justice Education Fund in Oakland.

Too bad she isn't angry enough to study some math. Here's a sample question from the California exit exam:

Solve for x.

2x - 3 = 7

1) -5 2) -2 3) 2 4) 5

Check out a sample test here.

Anyway, back to our story:

``She's embarrassed, but she's angry enough to speak on the record because she knows the test is wrong.''

x isn't 5. It's 2. It's a conspiracy!

I wonder what would happened if the "Californians for Justice Education Fund" actually tried to teach kids math and English instead of teaching them how to be little Trotskyites?

...

Sandra failed both the verbal and math portions that day. When the school got its act straight the following year and tested students in smaller groups, she passed the verbal section. But she's 30 points shy of passing the math part after her fourth try.

A passing grade on the test is 55%.

The question isn't whether she'll pass. She's improved her math score every time and has at least four more tries. Her grade point average of 2.67, which includes A's in English and a C-plus in intermediate algebra, indicates she'll eventually pass and earn her diploma.

The question is, what happens to her in the meantime and to the thousands of California students who fail on their first attempts and possibly never pass at all?

The question is, what is the point of this pity party? Sandra's abysmal math skills won't cost her a diploma or a shot at college.

``To me, the exit exam is a measure of the intelligence of a student,'' she said. ``It's made us lose our confidence. I've lost my confidence.''

This is not what the state Board of Education and Gov. Gray Davis had in mind when they dreamed up the exit exam. It is not an IQ test. Its purpose, they keep telling us, is to jump-start quality teaching at failing schools, not to punish individual students.

But punishment is what this cruel and unnecessary test delivers best.

``I once wanted to go to a university, but you can't get into college without a diploma,'' she said. ``Even if I do pass the test, I'm still going to feel bad. It won't give me my confidence back. I'll probably have to go to a community college.''

If you can't score 55% on a test which is half gimmes and half simple word problems, do you really belong in a university? Feedback is sometimes painful, but how can one survive without it?

Cue the violins:

There you have it. A promising young lady, the daughter of hard-working Mexican immigrants, who dreams of becoming a social worker, who would normally graduate on time and qualify for admission to a state university -- is already beaten down at age 17.

I remember reading about a guy who was cut from his high school basketball team. (Don't tell Rodriguez that thousands of kids are getting cut from California high school sports teams every year; he'll stage a hunger strike.) His name was Michael Jordan. I don't think anyone would describe him as "beaten down."

Why? Whatever happened to the idea of building character and confidence in high school? What happened to the high school as agent of social progress? When did we turn them into testing mills, where the losers are ground into dust and the winners get to take the SAT?

Oh my god. Whatever happened to overcoming adversity? Whatever happened to realistic self-appraisal? What the hell kind of "social progress" is it where kids don't learn and then everyone pretends they do, to be polite?