Spitting on excellence

Why shouldn't students who failed California's high school exit exam be allowed to graduate? What's the harm if twelfth-graders who cannot pass a statewide test of eighth-grade math and tenth-grade English walk across a stage and receive a diploma?

That's the question the California Supreme Court has been asked to consider, and quickly, because eleven percent of the Class of 2006 -- about 47,000 students -- are at this moment deciding whether they really have to attend summer school or whether Superior Court Judge Robert Freedman's injunction halting the exit exam is going to stand.

When considering whether there is any harm caused by striking down the exit exam, the court should think about the students who passed it.

If the exit exam stands, a California high school graduate from the Class of 2006 can walk into a human resources office and write down on an application that he or she has a high school diploma, and everyone will know that, at a minimum, that applicant has passed a test of tenth-grade English and eighth-grade math.

If the exit exam is struck down, that same high school graduate will walk into a human resources office and face the reality that everybody believes a California high school diploma is utterly and completely meaningless.

Reality doesn't go away just because judges think it's unfair.

But why is it fair to strike down the reward for achievement, a credible diploma, to preserve a reward for failure, the right to graduate with classmates as if nothing was wrong at all?

What kind of a society will we have if we tell high-achieving students that they're suckers for working hard and studying, when they could be doing drugs and drinking, with exactly the same outcome?

Of course, the outcome is not the same for long. Students who have high-achieving parents learn that lesson at home.

The real harm will be done to intelligent, hard-working students -- including some who have not yet passed the exit exam -- who don't have anyone pushing them on to college and high-paying careers. They are the victims who will pay a lifelong price for the devaluing of a high school diploma, for the damaging message that studying is foolish, for the reckless decision to prize the feelings of the failures above the achievements of the excellent.


Copyright 2006

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