Appeals court upholds CAHSEE requirement

A state appeals court has ruled that the state can continue to require California students to pass the California High School Exit Exam in order to receive a diploma, concluding that an Alameda County Superior Court judge’s order blocking implementation of the exam requirement was “legally impermissible, misdirected in character and overbroad in scope.”
But the 1st District Court of Appeal went on to urge the state and lawyers who sued to overturn the CAHSEE requirement to settle their dispute and work together to provide the resources needed to improve educational opportunities for struggling students.
The ruling came in the Valenzuela v. O’Connell lawsuit that was filed on behalf of economically disadvantaged students in the class of 2006. The plaintiffs argued they had not passed CAHSEE partly because their schools had not adequately prepared them for the exam.
The three-judge panel ruled that ordering the state to award diplomas to students who do not have the basic skills needed to pass the exam would be unfair to the very students the lawsuit was designed to help. Instead of taking advantage of remediation programs so they could pass CAHSEE, the judges wrote, these students might end their formal education altogether once they received their diplomas in the mistaken belief they had the academic tools to succeed in life.
“We believe the trial court’s May 12 order erred by focusing its remedy on equal access to diplomas rather than on equal access to education [and the funding necessary to provide it],” the panel concluded.
The court made it clear that it sympathized with students in the class of 2006 who failed to get their diplomas solely because they failed the exam. The court agreed that the state had not allocated enough money to pay for remedial classes for all high school students in the class of 2006 who needed help.
In order to target funds to the neediest schools, the state Department of Education had established an application process awarding remediation money to schools with particularly low CAHSEE pass rates. Struggling students who attended more successful schools were unable to benefit from this funding. The 2006-07 budget provides remediation funds for all 2007 seniors who have yet to pass the test, regardless of where they attend school.
The court recommended that both sides in the Valenzuela lawsuit work with the trial court to “step outside their ‘fog of war’ and cooperatively find pathways necessary to provide equal and adequate access to meaningful remedial assistance to students in the class of 2007 and beyond who enter their senior year of high school with the CAHSEE hurdle still before them. In order for that process to result in any practical benefit to the remaining plaintiff class members, who had hoped to graduate in 2006, it obviously must begin immediately.”
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4Read the appellate decision @ www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/A113933.PDF