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A press release issued today by Assembly Speaker Karen Bass calls into question the validity of the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE), a standardized test created by the California Department of Education ostensibly to improve academic performance. The test, a creation of then-senator Jack O'Connell who later became California's Superintendent of Education, became law in 1999. The test was originally intended to affect the graduating classes 0f 2004, but political pressures resulted in California's State Board of Education revising the deadline to 2006.

Over 40 thousand students of the California class of 2006 about one of every ten students were denied diplomas because they didn't pass the CAHSEE although they fulfilled the same requirements previously valid for graduation.

Today's press release by the Speaker's office said the Stanford report addresses declining graduation rates of girls and minority students following the CAHSEE's implementation.

"This study reinforces the concerns that many of us have had about the exit exam from its inception," Bass said in the statement. "The dramatically more negative effects of the exam on girls and on students of color, the biased signal it sends to employers, and the lack of promised improvements in student achievement are very troubling and must make us all pause and take stock of whether the exam could be fixed or is fatally flawed," she said.

Jean Ward is a high school teacher and administrator who, like many in the education field, have serious reservations about the California High School Exit Exam. She has worked for most of her professional life with at-risk teenagers and has seen the damaging effects the test can have on students, many who suffer learning disabilities and poverty.

"For reasons as many and varied as one could imagine, tens of thousands of California high school students are being denied that one key to higher education or a decent place in the work force. The bias is to the privileged and the wealthier students who have been given so many more tools to success than my student population," Ward told the Examiner. "I love the work that I did for over three decades, but it breaks one's heart to see the devastated look on the faces of young people who now know exactly what they have most feared: they are categorically being told they just don't measure up. No matter their disability, no matter their life challenges, they cannot receive appropriate recognition for 12 years of schooling," she said clearly dismayed.

Ward was somewhat surprised, however, by the Stanford report's finding that girls were at a greater disadvantage than boys. " Actually, based on my experience working with exactly the clientele that has been most hurt by this exam, I would have guessed it to be an equal opportunity biased instrument, preventing many incredibly worthy Special Education students, low-income and at-risk teenagers of all stripes, and color, male and female, of just a fighting chance to acquire a diploma they have worked so hard for," she said.

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