Silly judge blocks California high school exit exam

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BoomerD

No Lifer
Feb 26, 2006
62,912
11,305
136
Originally posted by: Powermoloch
The school failed them, not the students. It is unfortunate that I had graduated 3 years ago although the test is not official, and thankfully i'm doing very well at CSULB (wooo!).


I never knew my results anyway...rofl

What are they siupposed to do? You can't open their heads and pour the knowledge in to them. All a school can do is make the knowledge available, and it's up to the student and the parents to take it. If a child has a learning disability, then yes, the school has a responsibliity to provide extra resources, but any kid with 3.8 GPA doesn't have a learning disability.
 

Xcobra

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2004
3,623
366
126
Originally posted by: techs
In reading the article this caught my eye:

Valenzuela vs. California, was named for its lead plaintiff, Liliana Valenzuela, who, like Iris Padilla, is a Richmond High senior. According to the suit, Liliana maintains a 3.84 grade-point average and is 12th in her senior class of 413 students. She has passed the math portion of the exam, but not the English portion. Her first language is Spanish.

So Liliana has a 3.84 gpa and is 12th best out of her 413 student class. Her suit alleges that California did not provide teachers with proper credentials to teach her English and that her classes were overcrowded.
Who failed here?
The State of California. Not this apparently very bright and hard working young lady.
She is right you know, i live close to richmond, CA and my sis went over there too and jesus there was at least one fight every single day at one, my sis didnt graduate from highschool cuz teachers are careless about the kids...it is pretty bad, but seriously why take out the Exit Exam, its not the hardest thing in the world, i understand that english was no her first language but it wasnt because of the test that she couldnt pass it, it was cuz of the FACULTY!!
 

BoomerD

No Lifer
Feb 26, 2006
62,912
11,305
136
Originally posted by: Xcobra
Originally posted by: techs
In reading the article this caught my eye:

Valenzuela vs. California, was named for its lead plaintiff, Liliana Valenzuela, who, like Iris Padilla, is a Richmond High senior. According to the suit, Liliana maintains a 3.84 grade-point average and is 12th in her senior class of 413 students. She has passed the math portion of the exam, but not the English portion. Her first language is Spanish.

So Liliana has a 3.84 gpa and is 12th best out of her 413 student class. Her suit alleges that California did not provide teachers with proper credentials to teach her English and that her classes were overcrowded.
Who failed here?
The State of California. Not this apparently very bright and hard working young lady.
She is right you know, i live close to richmond, CA and my sis went over there too and jesus there was at least one fight every single day at one, my sis didnt graduate from highschool cuz teachers are careless about the kids...it is pretty bad, but seriously why take out the Exit Exam, its not the hardest thing in the world, i understand that english was no her first language but it wasnt because of the test that she couldnt pass it, it was cuz of the FACULTY!!

Apparently, they must have not done a good job teaching you either...or else you just didn't pay any attention in english classes...
 

Powermoloch

Lifer
Jul 5, 2005
10,085
4
76
Originally posted by: BoomerD
Originally posted by: Powermoloch
The school failed them, not the students. It is unfortunate that I had graduated 3 years ago although the test is not official, and thankfully i'm doing very well at CSULB (wooo!).


I never knew my results anyway...rofl

What are they siupposed to do? You can't open their heads and pour the knowledge in to them. All a school can do is make the knowledge available, and it's up to the student and the parents to take it. If a child has a learning disability, then yes, the school has a responsibliity to provide extra resources, but any kid with 3.8 GPA doesn't have a learning disability.


True I can agree with that. But she had gone so far already, why stop there? what's the use of having grades if the exit exam determines on having a diploma or not?
 

Philippine Mango

Diamond Member
Oct 29, 2004
5,594
0
0
Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
Originally posted by: goku
Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/05/09/MNGSVIO7NI1.DTL

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/edi....story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials

goddamned low standards. it doesn't test for 12 grade proficiency, it tests for 8th grade math and 10th grade english. if you can't pass that you shouldnt get a diploma end of story. now we are going to hand out fraudulent credentials thanks to this bs. i don't care how incompetent your teacher is. any half intelligent kid should be able to learn atleast 8th grade math.

where was this hs where the last class was algebra?
in the bay area our schools even have ap calculus classes.

8th grade math, ORLY? last time I checked it was geometry which is 10th grade math..

Here is my opinion on the HS Exit exam...
If you can pass the exam, one should be able to get a diploma right there and then if they so choose. It shouldn't be a 'ged' but a real HS diploma, I mean hell if this is the one test holding some one back from graduating and is a tool to guage your education level, then why bother with the 'credits' system? Why should someone need a certain amount of credits to graduate highschool if they passed the HS exit exam? :confused:

everytime i've heard it talked about on npr or in the news its refered to as 8th grade math. npr esp is generally very good at sticking to the facts.

as for the girl with the supposed 3.8gpa that can't hack it. sounds like she's a victim of grade inflation eh? i really really doubt there are many cases of straight A students not being able to hack 10th grade english.. this test is administered several times to give students an idea early on what skills are required of them. a straight A student would see this bar and aim to pass it through diligent study, they have years to prepare and self evaluate, not weeks or months like with normal class tests. so i don't believe she would have failed if was legit. the fact is most students pass this test, let alone the A students. one wonders how she managed to pass her 10th grade english class:p let alone get good grades in the reste of her classes since english is fundamental to excelling in everything but math.
It's definately NOT 8th grade math, I'd know because I took it.. People don't have years to prepare for these tests, the tests were JUST inacted and I'd say it's not fair to some people who reside in certain areas.. I passed the test easily but I can definately see how some one could NOT pass the test since I know people who graduated high school whose last math class was algebra..

where are these hs where the last class is algebra, here in the bay area where we have a high % mexican non white we still have access to ap calculus classes in hs

No, HIS last math class was algebra, it's not that the school doesn't offer higher math, it's just that he was unable to pass a math level higher than algebra.
 

lyssword

Diamond Member
Dec 15, 2005
5,761
25
91
well as another USSR (ukraine) immigrant, came @ 13yrs old to US, I can tell you that english wasn't hard to learn, even tho the alphabet is completely different and pronunciation, structure of the words is far different than spanish compared to english. English as Second Language program is ok for starters, for example if the only words you know is "yes"/no.. But after that, you have to be on your own pretty much and have the desire to learn. Another aspect of learning a language is the spoken versus written. I love reading books, so for me learning spelling and word structure wasn't hard. In fact after 3-4 years I knew how to spell the words better than my fellow classmates, not necessarily that I had larger vocab, but the spelling of common words :p was in ESL (1class). I didn't do so well overall as I was a slacker in HighSchool, addicted to pc games. I did pass the exams (English writing/reading/ math/science) without much problems. In community college orientation I got very good score in English testing, way better than math score. English 161 I think and math 91.
Being an immigrant definetly isn't the greatest thing in the world, harassement, embarasements involving pronunciation of words, kids picking on ya, being more of an outsider especially considering I was an introvert to begin with.
Other than that I really love U.S and be a part of it, no other place I'd rather be.
Learning american-english just as well as your 1st language is very possible. Yes, starting from scratch and catching up to local kids is tougher than normal, but if we are here to stay we need to learn the american language.
 

Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
72,435
6,091
126
Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
egads the battle continues!
update on page 1

You people that post page 1 and page 2 etc need to be more specific. One hundred posts for me is page one. You can elect the number of posts you want per page.