You Mean They Have To Know Stuff?

Ed Week Article

I just read an article in Education Week on state exit exams. Exit exams should be familar to anyone who is from New York and had to take the regents. While each state is a little different, an exit exam is some sort of assessment that you must pass in order to graduate. Some times they are in individual subjects, sometimes they are taken at the end of each course, and sometimes they are a comprehensive test that kids take at the end of high school.

I actually don't know if NJ had this sort of test. It wouldn't have registered for me or my classmates because they wouldn't have been difficult for us. But for other less resourced schools, they become a huge deal worthy of months of cramming, a curriculum that focuses on them, and a big celebration when and if they are passed. The movie "Lean On Me", a film about the district that I used to teach in, turns "the test" into a motivational exercise instead of just a boring day filling out bubbles in the caf.

The reason exit exams are becoming politically unpopular is that they highlight was a bad job we do of educating certain groups of kids. These tests don't just mean something for the collective district, they mean something for the individual. Its easy to pass kids through to graduation when we grade them on what is called "seat time". Seat time is a system based upon simply showing up. Sure you have do to the bare minimum but most schools are willing to give you credit for trying. When someone has to demonstrate that they've learned something and not just sat through it, it is hard to pass them on when they fail your test.

Is the solution to scrap exit exams? Is it to make better exit exams? Is it better to rubber stamp kids through the system because they must not want an education?

The flip side of exit exams is probably a little more revolutionary than just revealing the system's failure. If you need to pass an exam to move to the next grade or course, does that mean that you should be able to take the exam at any point in time and move to the next level? If my (imaginary) kid can pass the 8th grade exit exam when they're in 7th, meaning that they know the material, can they just move on to the next course? What if they actually could do that, say they are home schooled or take their courses on line? That would change things pretty quickly.

So, maybe politicians are better off scraping exit exams. They not only make politicians and the school system look bad, they make people feel bad about the quality of education they have recieved. Plus, do you really want to change this great system that we have going? It worked so well for me...