Let's Pretend You Earned This

Tuesday, Apr. 11, 2006 - 12:18 a.m.

This story caught my attention yesterday. My comments are in [ ] brackets.

The West Contra Costa school board rejected a trustee's plan Monday to grant high school diplomas to as many as 500 students who have failed California's mandatory exit exam, calling the proposal reckless and illegal. Board member Dave Brown's resolution failed on a 4-1 vote.

Board member Karen Pfeifer said that awarding diplomas to students who failed the exam would make the students "go forward as a sham, a fake." "The fact is you are not prepared,'' board member Pfeifer told more students who were at the meeting to support the proposal. "You aren't prepared to be an electrician or a plumber because you can't do fractions."

[GO GIRL!]

Pfeifer said the district has failed to adequately educate students. "We are not a diploma mill. We don't just give them away. You earn them."

[Now just a minute here... The STUDENTS are the ones who are responsible for raising their hands when they need help. Teachers are not psychic.]

Had Brown's resolution passed, the West Contra Costa Unified School District would have become the first district in California to attempt to circumvent state law, which requires high school students, beginning this year, to pass a written exam to obtain their diplomas.

[Now there's a fine thing to be teaching the students. Go ahead and break the law when the grownups tell you it's okay to do so]

During the four-hour special board meeting, lawyers warned the school district that it could lose state funding and could face a takeover by the state or county if the resolution passed. Board members received letters of warning from State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell and Contra Costa County education superintendent Joseph Ovick, urging them to reject the measure.

"We do have a serious risk of violating the law by using our district as a test pilot case," said board member Karen Leong Fenton.

Brown's plan would have allowed high school seniors to present a portfolio of their work or complete a research project in place of taking the exit exam as a graduation requirement.

[Um, yeah, just like in real life. This is like saying if I own the M*A*S*H* series on DVD that I'm qualified to be a doctor.]

As of January, about 25 percent of the district's 1,986 high school seniors had not passed the exit exam, compared to about 10 percent statewide. The district has not received results from the March administration of the exam.About 130 of those West Contra Costa Unified students who failed the exam have completed the district's course requirements for graduation.

Shortly after the meeting began, more than 200 students and supporters of Brown marched into the meeting, briefly halting it, while chanting and holding signs including "don't hold our diploma's hostage."

[Notice where the apostrophe is. That's an incorrect usage.]

Brown had said he believed many students who failed the exam could be successful in life and should not be penalized because the district had not properly educated them for the exit exam. "That diploma has value. It will handicap them for the rest of their lives (to not have a diploma)," he said. "I never intended to make a point or raise an issue. The plan was to help these students."

After rejecting Brown's proposal, the board unanimously approved a plan that allows students who fulfill the district's course requirements but fail the exit exam to participate in graduation ceremonies and receive a certificate in place of a diploma. Many other school districts will give similar "certificates of completion," which state officials say are legal but do not hold the value of a high school diploma.

Beginning this year, students must pass the test's math and language arts sections to graduate. Students can continue taking the test, which assesses language arts skills through a 10th grade level and math through algebra, after completing 12th grade to qualify for a diploma. The test has been challenged in court as unfair, particularly to students whose first language is not English.

[So, the people who are filing these lawsuits are complaining about the difficulty level of a FREE EDUCATION? Does not compute.]

Last summer, West Contra Costa Unified instituted a number of interventions for students who had not passed the exam, including required exit exam-preparatory classes during school hours. About 140 students attended at least one of eight Saturday classes offered by Kaplan, said Howard Cohen, the district's regional superintendent of secondary schools.

[Despite this additional cram school prep class that was offered, only about a quarter of the students who needed to attend this class actually bothered showing up. And yet somehow this is the teacher's fault?... Why aren't the parents of these students providing an adequate study environment and hoisting those kids out of bed on a Saturday and insisting that they attend this class?]

In May, the district is holding a "graduation alternatives informational fair" at Contra Costa College, where students who have not passed the exam can learn about jobs and educational programs that do not require a high school diploma.

["Want fries with that?"]

"I believe we've done more than most districts" to help students who have failed the exam, Cohen said.

Gee. I wonder how the 'English as a second language' students who got As and Bs feel about having to share the stage with the kids who are using that as an excuse to not have actually graduated from high school?...

Artifically boosting the self esteem of a child so that the child has no idea how the real world works is nothing short of abuse.

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That's all. Have a nice Tuesday!

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