CAHSEE results rise slightly; O’Connell criticizes budget cuts
Published: September 3, 2009
Pass rates on the California High School Exit Exam rose incrementally in the past year, with 90.6 percent of students in the Class of 2009 satisfying the requirement in time for their graduation, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell announced Wednesday.
That’s up from the 90.4 percent rate for the Class of 2008, the only other year that the requirement to pass the test in order to graduate from high school was extended to students with disabilities following policy debates and court cases. In 2006, the first year CASHEE took effect, 91.2 percent of all high school seniors passed the exam in time to graduate with their class; the percentage rose to 93.3 percent for the Class of 2007.
State policy changes continue to influence the results, and O’Connell—who authored the CAHSEE law as a legislator in 1999 and has shaped its administration through two terms as the state’s elected schools chief—criticized deficit-driven decisions enacted this year by the state Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“Our schools today are operating on $18 billion less than they had anticipated” a year ago following several rounds of state budget cuts, O’Connell observed.
O’Connell reserved his strongest criticism for the lawmakers’ move to reverse the outcome of the lengthy court battle that applied the CAHSEE requirement to students receiving special educational services.
“This action represents an irresponsible and shortsighted shift in education policy that threatens to shortchange the quality of education for our students with disabilities,” O’Connell said.
Students persevere
Still, for the approximately 432,900 seniors in the Class of 2009 who did pass CAHSEE’s test of 10th-grade English and ninth-grade math skills on time—and for the 65.2 percent of sophomores who passed the exit exam in the 2008-09 school year, their first year of eligibility, and the 81.7 percent of juniors in 2008-09 who passed the exam—the achievement shows they are “continuing to meet the challenge of higher expectations,” O’Connell said. “The CAHSEE helps us ensure that each student is prepared with the critical basic skills needed for future success.”
The new numbers also show that an estimated 658 students from the Class of 2006 persevered and passed the exit exam between July 2008 and May 2009, along with an estimated 1,113 additional students from the Class of 2007 and an estimated 5,233 additional students from the Class of 2008.
Even more students throughout those grade levels have passed either CAHSEE’s English-language arts component or its mathematics component, but not both.
Approximately 45,015 students from the Class of 2009 have not yet passed the exit exam.
‘Narrowing of the achievement gap’
The new results disaggregate data for males and females; seven different ethnic and racial groups; economically disadvantaged students; English learners and those “Reclassified Fluent English”; and students receiving special educational services.
“I am encouraged by the results that show a narrowing of the achievement gap,” O’Connell said. “However, we must persevere until every student is prepared with the skills and concepts that are needed to pass this exam and be successful in life after high school.”
Related link:
Read O’Connell’s prepared remarks and find links to CAHSEE data @ http://www.cde.ca.gov/nr/ne/yr09/yr09rel127.asp#tab2