Richmond- Liliana Valenzuela is, in many ways, a success. The 19-year old, who grew up in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, landed in Richmond five years ago without speaking a word of English. Four years later, she graduated 12th in her class at Richmond High School. Now she is in her third semester at Contra Costa Community College, studying to be a nurse.
But she lacks one vital paper needed to move on to a four-year university and a degree: a high school diploma. Last Tuesday, she again took the English-language arts portion of the high school exit exam (she already passed the math portion), in hopes of receiving the passing score that has eluded her more times than she says she can remember.
She gets her results in November—and if she fails again, she said, she’ll be back. “I’ll keep taking it and taking it until I pass it,” said Valenzuela.
Statewide, 39,000 students from the Class of 2006—the first year the exit exam was required to graduate—finished their senior year without a diploma. Though nearly half of them, including Valenzuela, kept trying to pass the test afterwards, some say not enough is done to encourage them to do so.
“It’s out of sight, out of mind,” Carlos Taboada, a teacher and counselor at Richmond High, said of the outgoing 12th grade classes. Taboada is highly critical of the exit exam.
Students can take the test once as 10th graders, twice as 11th graders, three times as 12th graders and three times a year after that until they pass. Students who attend private or religious high schools, and people seeking a General Educational Development certificate, or GED, are not required to take the exam.
Some 4,800 Class of 2006 students around the state had gone on to pass the exam as of May 2007. More up-to-date statistics may come at the end of the month in the yearly report produced by an independent exam evaluator, said Linda Hooper, public information officer for the California Department of Education.
One of the key recommendations of last year’s report, authored by Human Resources Research Organization, was to collect more data on how many students continue to pursue a diploma through community college, or try to get a GED. The report also said more information is needed on the types of support programs being used by post-high school students to prepare for retaking the test, and which ones work.
Richmond High principal Orlando Ramos said his school knows next to nothing about what happens to students after they leave the school. “Once they’re gone, that’s it,” said Ramos. Besides a letter outlining choices for continuing to study for and take the exit exam, the school doesn’t follow up with outgoing students who haven’t passed it, he said.
Students do have options. Remedial help and exam prep classes are offered through adult education, summer school and after-school programs, and community colleges.
A bill waiting to be signed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger would require high schools to provide up to two additional years of “intensive instruction and services” to students who finish high school but still need to pass the exam. The bill would fulfill the conditional settlement reached in August in a class-action lawsuit, in which Valenzuela was a plaintiff, against the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jack O’Connell. The suit argued that students were not adequately prepared to pass the exit exam, which has been a condition for high school graduation in California since 2006, and therefore should not have their diplomas withheld.
Johanna Hartwig, a lawyer for the plaintiffs in the Valenzuela case, said Schwarzenneger was expected to sign the legislation, and that O’Connell wrote a letter to the governor urging him to do so. If signed into law, the bill, which was passed by the State Assembly on September 11, would take effect immediately in order to let failing students from the classes of 2006 and 2007 continue studying at their high schools if they choose.
Some 29,000 students from the class of 2007 had yet to pass the exit exam as of July, according to the California Department of Education. While these students may attend community college, having a high school diploma is required for four-year colleges and for many jobs.
Ramos said his school hasn’t even begun to discuss how they would comply with the new law, nor have they received any guidance from authorities. “We haven’t seen anything about this yet,” said Ramos. The bill doesn’t specify how the program would work, stating only that schools should use strategies “that are most likely to result in these pupils passing the parts of the high school exit examination that they have not yet passed.”
Richmond High assistant principal Jen Bender said the pending regulation would be hard to implement because there’s no way of knowing how many students would take advantage of the possibility to continue studying at high school. Plus, she said, there’s the potential need to hire more teachers on an already tight budget, and figure out how to deal with discipline problems, special learning needs and the potential influx of older-than-high school age kids on a high school campus.
“It’s going to be a struggle,” she said. The bill does not specifically address any of these issues.
Last Tuesday and Wednesday, seniors who had yet to pass the exit exam at Richmond High had another chance to pass it and be eligible for a diploma next spring. Students must pass both the English-language arts and math sections of the test, which are given on separate, consecutive days. School districts choose the test dates from options given by the state department of education.
As exam day approached, only two out of 19 students in Taboada’s 12th grade economics class said they had passed both the English-language arts and math sections of the exam. Some said that even if they didn’t pass this time, the idea of spending up to another two years at Richmond High doesn’t excite them.
“It seems like a waste of time,” said Norberto Ayala, 17. “I’ve been here studying for four years and to spend even more time here, it’s like, no.” Ayala said he’s thinking about going to art school or into a technical program, but can’t weigh the options seriously until he takes the exit exam and knows if he’ll graduate next spring.
Ayala and many of his fellow Spanish-speaking classmates have passed the math portion of the exam. It’s the English portion that gets them. According to Ramos, the principal, 90% of English learners in last year’s 12th grade class at Richmond High didn’t pass the English-language arts portion of the exam.
The results for English learners are similarly dismal across the state. Only 77% of Class of 2007 English learners had passed the exit exam as of May 2007, compared to 93% for all students combined. 87% of the 12th grade English learners who took the exam last May failed.
Under the pending law, English-language learners would be entitled to specialized instruction to improve English language proficiency in preparation for the exam. “This is just one piece in the large puzzle of how to give English-learners a fair chance at success,” said Hartwig, the lawyer.
Andréz Ordoño, also in Taboada’s class, doubted he would stay on at Richmond High beyond this school year even if he doesn’t pass the test. “If I don’t pass it this year, I think I’m going to get discouraged,” he said. Sometimes, said Ordoño, he thinks about “plan B”, maybe going back to Mexico, where he’s from, finding an employer that needs someone with English skills and studying acting. If he does pass the exit exam, he said he’d like to try to get into a four-year college here.
He and other 12th graders in Mr. Taboada’s class also said they consider going on to community college. The Peralta Community College District recently got a one-year grant to help post-high school students pass the exit exam. The program includes an introduction to community college and counseling to help students overcome feelings of failure, said Gary Yee, vice chancellor of educational services for the district. Yee said he hopes to extend the program to include recruiting students who are at risk of failing the exam well before their high school years are over, before they’ve accepted what he calls “a culture of failure.”
“That group hasn’t really been anybody’s target and that’s what we’re trying to turn around, even starting in the 10th grade,” said Yee. Similar programs are taking place at 20 other community colleges around the state, he said.
Valenzuela is already there. She’s taking remedial English classes, for free, at Contra Costa Community College to help her pass the exit exam alongside biology and other courses she needs to get into a state university. But, she said, if she had been given the opportunity to continue studying for the test at Richmond High, she would have taken it. Students should have all the help they can get to pass the exam, she said.
“A lot of students aren’t going to like the idea of staying up to another two years just to pass the exam,” she said, “but it’s better to have more opportunities to do it.”