Students in the Class of 2004 have four more chances to pass the California High School Exit Exam to earn their diplomas. Current pass rates throughout Valley school districts:

Bonita Unified School District
•English 97 percent passed
•Math 88 percent passed
•Overall 88 percent passed
(as of March 2003)

Chaffey Joint Union High School District
•English 84 percent passed
•Math 71 percent passed
•Overall 69 percent passed
(as of March 2003)

Chino Valley Unified School District
•English 97 percent passed
•Math 76 percent passed
•Overall n/a
(as of March 2003)

Claremont Unified School District
•English 91 percent passed
•Math 83 percent passed
•Overall 81 percent passed
(as of March 2003)

Corona-Norco Unified School District
•English 87 percent passed
•Math 73 percent passed
•Overall 72 percent passed
(as of March 2003)

Fontana Unified School District
•English 80 percent passed
•Math 67 percent passed
•Overall 63 percent passed
(as of January 2003)

Jurupa Unified School District
•English 74 percent passed
•Math 57 percent passed
•Overall 54 percent passed
(as of March 2003)

Pomona Unified School District
•English 76 percent passed
•Math 55 percent passed
•Overall 56 percent passed
(as of May 2003)

Rialto Unified School District
•English 89 percent passed
•Math 70 percent passed
•Overall 54 percent passed
(as of March 2003)

Upland Unified School District
•English 89 percent passed
•Math 79 percent passed
•Overall 77 percent passed
(as of March 2003)

Walnut Valley Unified School District
•English 97 percent passed
•Math 93 percent passed
•Overall 92 percent passed
(as of March 2003)

Statewide
•English 81 percent passed
•Math 62 percent passed
•Overall n/a
(as of March 2003)


As thousands of Inland Valley seniors worry about tripping on stage as they collect their diplomas, hundreds of juniors are worrying about tripping over a critical hurdle between themselves and graduation - the state's high school exit exam.

With one year left, almost 30 percent of the area's juniors have yet to pass. But district officials say the Class of 2004 is making steady progress toward graduation.

In February, data from Valley school districts showed approximately 67 percent of this year's juniors had passed the California High School Exit Exam. Current numbers reveal about 71 percent have passed the English and math portions of the exam.

"We were concerned that we would see a lower amount of kids passing with each successive test setting," said Kathy Beard, director of testing and assessment at Chaffey Joint Union High School District. "We are pleased to see a significant amount of kids passing. It's encouraging."

According to Beard, 69 percent of the junior class has passed the exam, compared with 53 percent six months ago.

"It's a combo of 10-minute focus lessons that target CAHSEE standards that kids haven't learned since middle school and (schoolwide) reading, where schools stop everything they are doing to read" for an isolated amount of time, Beard said of the district's 16-percentage point jump.

Though pass rates for the math portion are consistently lower than the English portion, Beard said she has seen significant improvements in math passage rates at Ontario, Montclair and Chaffey high schools.

For example, 23 percent more juniors at Ontario High School have passed math since March 2002; 22 percent more have passed at Montclair High School; and 20 percent more have passed at Chaffey High School.

The English language arts portion of the CAHSEE consists of multiple-choice questions and writing tasks. It includes vocabulary, reading comprehension and an essay.

The math portion includes statistics, measurement and geometry, number sense, data analysis and probability, mathematical reasoning and algebra. The test covers math knowledge through the eighth grade.

Juniors who have failed one or both parts of the test have four more chances to pass. For many school districts, the exam will be administered in July, once in the fall, in March and one last time after graduation.

At Walnut Valley Unified School District, officials cited factors including outside tutoring and parent involvement with the district's high pass rate.

According to Robin Richter in the district's testing and assessment department, 92 percent have passed both parts of the exam.

District officials at Pomona Unified School District said juniors have made steady progress this year. Currently, 56 percent have passed both parts of the test, compared with 48 percent in January.

Mitch Hovey, assistant superintendent of educational services at Bonita Unified School District, said the district has added additional elective classes specializing in CAHSEE material for students who have failed the exam. According to Hovey, 12 percent have yet to pass both tests.

At Upland Unified School District, CAHSEE summer school classes are available for the 23 percent of juniors who have yet to pass the exam, according to Sharon Corkrum, assistant superintendent of educational services.

"During the school year, we have afterschool intervention in math and reading as well as classes during the school day," Corkrum said. "Our continuation high school has a partnership with Chaffey College students, who come to tutor the kids."

Corkrum said challenges students face include those who did not benefit from standards based education in their primary school years.

"The high school exit exam is a standards-based test. Those standards were put into place five years ago and they are incremental," she said. "When you have a system that is built in kindergarten, the skills build on the next. Many of these kids were already in junior high, so they didn't get that incremental foundation that would have helped them to prepare for the CAHSEE."

Despite the challenges, students are still making progress, Corkrum said. Seventy-nine percent of this year's Upland juniors have passed math, compared to 69 percent in January. A one-percentage point decrease, 90 percent to 89 percent, in English language arts is due to transient students who come to the district in the middle of the school year, Corkrum said. Overall, 77 percent have passed both parts of the test, compared with 67 percent six months ago.

Roger Yoho, director of testing at Corona-Norco Unified School District, said the district's English and math mastery classes are helping students pass the exit exam.

"When these students were in the 10th grade, if they didn't pass the test, then we required them to take a mastery class during their regular school day," Yoho said.

According to Yoho, 87 percent of the Class of 2004 have passed English language arts, 73 percent have passed math and 72 percent have passed both portions of the test.

Jeff Ellingsen, Chino Valley Unified School District director of secondary curriculum, said many parents and students are utilizing outside CAHSEE study books and downloading materials from the state Department of Education Web site to prepare for the exam.

The state plans to distribute workbooks later this summer that will cover both content areas for the high school exit exam, according to Jan Chladek, manager of the state CAHSEE office.

The workbooks, which were drafted and field-tested by the University of California, will be available for every student in the Class of 2005 who failed the test. However, students in the Class of 2004 will not get workbooks because of budget and scheduling snafus.

"The money (for the workbooks) was first allocated with the Budget Act of 2001," Chladek said. "Then we began developing requests but didn't get a successful bidder (to develop the books) until June 2002. By that time, it made sense to make the book available to the Class of 2005."

If there is new money, the state Department of Education will send a hard copy of the workbook to districts, Chladek said. In addition, as soon as a copy is ready to print, they plan to make the workbook available online for all students.

Though current law says that all students in the Class of 2004 must pass the exit exam in order to receive a high school diploma, that may change if the state Board of Education decides to delay making it a requirement.

The board has until Aug. 1 to make that decision.

Some Valley educators believe the board may chose to delay the start of the program because the current junior class has not had the benefits of education improvements like class-size reductions.

"The state Board will give careful consideration to opportunity-to-learn issues presented in the study as it considers a decision to delay the consequences of the exit exam for the class of 2004," state board president Reed Hastings said.

"Any decision to delay would need to be balanced against the importance of staying the course of the positive reforms now taking root in many high schools across the state."