The results are in on the state's high-school exit exam:

California flunked.

Although administered to students, the exit exam was really a test of the state's educational system. Given that students have multiple chances to pass the exam, and that it requires merely a 10th-grade mastery of English and middle-school comprehension of math, passing shouldn't be a problem for any well-prepared high- school senior.

That's the problem: Our students aren't well prepared.

Just 81 percent of the Class of 2004 has passed the English portion of the exam, and that figure drops to 62 percent for the math component.

Realizing that millions of kids were doomed not to get diplomas, the State Board of Education has decided to postpone the exit-exam requirement for two years.

State officials must reason that if they can't improve test scores, they're better off concealing them. Better to pass kids through, the thinking goes, than to stigmatize them with failure.

But officials are fooling themselves if they think it helps students to give them a meaningless diploma instead of a decent education.