Exit exam not an issue for most of CVUSD's graduating seniors
By Kyle Jorrey kjorrey@theacorn.com

Thirty-two students from Conejo Valley high schools must wait until July to find out whether or not they passed the California High School Exit Exam they took in May. The group represents just 2 percent of the district's graduating seniors.

These students will receive certificates of completion-not diplomas-at their graduation ceremonies, which will be held today at Westlake and Thousand Oaks high schools and tomorrow at Newbury Park High School.

The other 98 percent of seniors already passed the exit exam or are special education students who've been given a one-year waiver on the test from the California Department of Education. This year's seniors are the first class required to pass the exit exam to graduate. The exam covers math through algebra and English through the ninth grade.

Students who didn't pass the May test will have the opportunity to take the exam again in July. Those who did pass will receive their official high school diplomas in the mail sometime this summer, according to Richard Simpson, deputy superintendent of the Conejo Valley Unified School District (CVUSD).

While Simpson admitted he wished the number were zero, he did say 32 was a reasonably low number not to have passed the exit exam by the end of the senior year, especially considering 17 of those students are learning English as a second language.

"Half of those students are relatively new to the country," Simpson said. "They might be very bright, very good students in their native tongue, but . . . they must pass the English portion (of the exit exam) in English."

That number looks even better, Simpson said, when you consider that 10 percent of the district's graduating seniors are special education students and another 8 percent are English language learners.

"Yet we have only 2 percent who aren't going to make it," he said.

According to Simpson, around 90 percent of CVUSD seniors passed the exam when it was first offered to them their sophomore year. That number reached 92 percent by the end of their junior year.

The other 6 percent was picked up over the course of this year, Simpson said, thanks in part to extra math and reading classes that were offered to those struggling with the exam.

"We started the year with 138 kids that were not going to graduate," Simpson said. "We have put in a lot of time and effort to personally work with every one of those at-risk kids to get to the point where we're at now."

If a student is still unable to pass the exit exam in July, he or she can come back as what Simpson called a "fifth-year senior," taking remedial classes to prepare to take the test again.

Despite all the uncertainty over the past two months concerning whether or not the exit exam would count towards graduation-an issue that was juggled in California courts-Superintendent Robert Fraisse said the district always approached the matter as if the test would be counted.

"We've proceeded from the very beginning as if this decision was absolutely in cement," Fraisse said. "We had done the work every step of the way and our students weren't hit hard by the indecision."

Although Fraisse said the district fully supports the exit exam, he did say the time has come for the state of California to decide on the matter once and for all. "It doesn't do the students a

service to keep it in limbo," Fraisse said.