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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated

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From: LindyBill	3/7/2005 5:27:25 PM
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Exit exam California Insider A Weblog by Sacramento Bee Columnist Daniel Weintraub sacbee.com In response to this column Sunday defending the state's high school exit exam, I got an interesting note from an education professor at one of our state universities. She opposes the exam, she said, because only 19 percent of students who were not fluent in English passed the test in 2004. Further, she said, only about 60 percent of students who begin school in California after kindergarten and don't speak English as their native language will be fluent by the 12th grade. "In other words," she writes, "if a student is a second language speaker of English, his or her chances of failing the HSEE are somewhere between 40%-80%. This is not fair." Is this a matter of fairness, or simple fact? Perhaps the situation the professor describes is a reflection of a simple and deliberate policy: if you can't speak English by the 12th grade, you don't get a diploma in California schools. That not only seems reasonable, it also is in the best interests of those very students. Insisting that they learn English is the single best way to ensure their success at integrating into society and moving up from the poverty that disproportionately plagues immigrant families. The fact that it's controversial to require students to speak, read and write English before graduating from high school shows just how dysfunctional our education system has become.

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