High school exit exams are a growing trend

By 2012, 74% of the nation’s public school students will be required to pass an exit exam to graduate, according to a report released last week by the Washington, D.C.-based Center on Education Policy.

Students of color are particularly affected in the 26 states that will require or already administer the test. Currently, 75% of these students live in states that require exit exams to graduate; that figure will rise to 84% by 2012.

At the same time, more students will be required to take more difficult end-of-course exams in order to graduate, signaling that state leaders are not entirely satisfied with exit exams, which are minimum competency tests.

Read on for the full release from the Center on Education Policy and a link to the entire report.

-- Howard Blume

WASHINGTON — Aug. 13, 2008 — In its seventh annual report on high school exit exams,
the Center on Education Policy finds that exit exams continue to have a significant impact
on American education. By 2012, 74 percent of the nation’s public school students in 26 states
will be required to pass an exit exam to graduate, according to the report. In a shift from recent
testing policy, however, more of these students will be required to take end-of-course exams as
states move away from comprehensive and minimum competency tests, the report adds.

The report, State High School Exit Exams: A Move Toward End-of-Course Exams, found that
only one state (Washington) has added a state-mandated exit exam since 2007 and three more
states (Arkansas, Maryland, and Oklahoma) will do so by 2012. The impact of exit exams is
most striking for students of color. Today, 75% of students of color attend public schools
in states that require exit exams to graduate; that percentage will rise to 84% by 2012.

The report also documents a growing trend by states to move toward end-of-course exams, which
usually are standards-based and assess mastery of specific course content. In 2002, only two
states used end-of-course exams. That number rose to four states in 2007-08. By 2015, 11 states
will rely on end-of-course exams and three more will implement dual testing systems that include
end-of-course exams. By contrast, minimum-competency tests, which generally focus on basic
skills below the high school level, are becoming less common and will be phased out in all 26
states with exit exams by 2015. The 14 states that will use end-of-course exams by 2015:
Arkansas, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York,
Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Washington.

In surveys and interviews conducted for the report, state education officials reported many
reasons for adopting end-of-course exams. Almost all states that have adopted or are moving
toward end-of-course exams reported that they are doing so to improve overall accountability,
increase academic rigor and achieve alignment between state standards and curriculum.
“States say they are moving toward end-of-course exams because the tests make more sense
in terms of alignment with existing high school curriculum,” said Jack Jennings, CEP president
and chief executive. “However, to understand the full impact of end-of-course exams, we need more
detailed studies about implementation issues and how the exams affect student outcomes,
curriculum, teaching, and performance by specific student groups.”

The report notes that major challenges still exist around the adoption and implementation of
end-of-course exams, such as managing the tight time lines required to develop multiple exams
or figuring out how to get exam results back to school districts quickly. Other challenges
reported include addressing concerns about the length and frequency of testing and offering
remediation for students who do not pass the exams.

Administrators and officials say that another advantage of end-of-course exams is that they can
use the results to make more informed decisions about how to deliver interventions to students
and improve professional development for teachers. At the same time, most reported that they
do not use the end-of-course exams -– or exit exams in general -– to ensure readiness for college and work.
Several lessons learned about end-of-course exams are outlined in the report. For example,
both state education officials and district administrators stressed the importance of
implementing end-of-course exams over time. They also encourage the inclusion of teachers
and other stakeholders in the adoption process, starting with solid academic standards, and
offering training and professional development to prepare for end-of-course exams.
The report also examined the legal challenges to exit exams in Arizona and California. These
types of challenges, among other things, have prompted many states to expand their alternative
paths to graduation. All of the 23 states that have state-mandated exit exams offer
alternative measures for students with disabilities, but only three offer such measures
specifically for English language learners. When asked for the percentages of students
completing high school using alternative measures, only about half of the states reported they
track and collect this data, making it difficult to know how many students are actually affected by
alternative measures.

“It appears that, with few exceptions, alternative measures affect a very small percentage of
students overall,” Jennings said. “Still, with only about half of states able to tell us how many
students graduated in 2007 using alternative paths, it is clear that we need to improve how we
track these students so that we can better understand how to serve them.”

State High School Exit Exams: A Move Toward End-of-Course Exams, individual state profiles,
previous reports, and other information from CEP are available online at www.cep-dc.org.