Archived News Item

Enter Through the Exit

So the exit exams will begin tomorrow, devouring in one fell swoop 1st, 2nd, and 3rd period for three days running. Teachers everywhere are flapping in circles, squawking about lost time, and for good reason: between this and Friday’s holiday, they’re losing most of an entire week of school.

The concept of the California High School Exit Exam is a simple one: to ensure that you have the knowledge to graduate from a California high school. Call it a standardized test for your diploma; the state wants to make sure that, at a certain point in your education, you’ve learned x and y and z before they cough up a piece of paper saying you’re educated.

Logical, sure. But it’s still weird. Check this out — we’re taking this test as sophomores. Second year of high school. Last year, as a matter of fact, the reluctant victims took it as freshman — first year of high school. Yet how can this be a test of high school knowledge if we take it before we’ve had any high school?

The answer, of course, is that it’s not. It’s a test of general knowledge, total education, not necessarily learned in high school but everywhere. In fact, we could have taken this before high school, if we were on the usual course track; its English and Math portions extend only to 9th grade curriculum. But not everyone is on the same track, and the state has one goal in mind: To ensure that before we escape, we’ve reached a certain standard of civilization.

The concept is logical. The execution, as usual, sort of sucks. Deal with it.

All that said, a clarification on the schedule: 10th graders and others taking the test will skip 1st, 2nd and 3rd period on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. They will be heading to a designating testing spot, one of many, which they should have been told already. They will test. If they finish before the start of 3rd period, they may be sent there. When it ends, they will go to lunch, and proceed with a normal schedule from hence forth. 0 period will be held as normal.

Thursday is even more interesting, as it involves the Math section of the text, which is intended to take additional time. Because of this, not only will you miss 1st–3rd, 4th period has been swapped with lunch, creating an uninterrupted stretch from 1st through 4th period — all of which will be available to finish your test. Lunch comes after then, during the time 4th period normally would. After that, the day continues normally as best it can.

The ordinary testing time is three (or four) periods. If, however, you cannot or do not finish in that time, you are free to continue taking it; a note will be provided, and you can keep plugging away until the end of the day, at which point they’re going to kick you out.

Sophomores have 7 chances to pass this test, not including this one. It is pass/fail; the only score recorded on your transcript is whether you passed it, and when. If you fail, you will be enrolled in summer school so as you might not fail the next time.

Don’t stress.

Progress reports will be sent out soon and should arrive, as you might guess, shortly after that. The semester is therefore one-quarter over.

The date today was 03/03/03. The graduating class of ’03 enjoyed this opportunity.

— Brandon