Although there are certainly more pressing issues in Sacramento right now, the state Board of Education managed to get our governor’s attention earlier this summer before the recall became all-consuming. The board delayed implementing one of the governor’s pet legislative initiatives — the creation of an exit examination for all graduates of public high schools in the state.

The idea was to put more accountability on the schools and the students to make sure everyone graduating meets some basic requirements in addition to passing all of their relevant course work.

While it’s not a bad idea, I think it puts the emphasis on the wrong end of high school. There needs to be an examination to get into high school, as occurs at every private high school in the state. Maybe then, the quality and education of the students in public middle schools will get the attention they deserve.

I have a 13-year-old in my house who is living proof of the need for such exams at the front-end of high school when the students are still more ready to help save themselves. The 12th grade is way too late!

So far, students taking the exam are not passing it with any sort of flying colors, and a group of high school sophomores and juniors lined up to tell board members to not “deny diplomas because of a test you haven’t properly prepared us for.” Note the “you” reference, another sign public school students aren’t learning the first lesson of a good education — take personal responsibility for your education, your own grades.

The statewide exam requires only a ninth-grade level of proficiency in math, and a 10th-grade level in English. Nevertheless, state Board of Education officials said so far only 44 percent of the class of 2004 public high school students passed the math section of the exam on their first try; 64 percent passed the English language arts section on their first attempt.

Undaunted, Gov. Gray Davis issued a statement saying that the exam was focusing schools and students on “academic improvement,” and he said, “A great deal of progress is being made.” The governor didn’t want the exam’s delayed implementation to give students and schools reason to slack off.

The governor and school officials can take some solace from recent results that show younger students in the class of 2005 have had better success in their first time taking the test (60 percent passed the math section and 79 percent the English).

But having to prepare students once they are in high school to pass proficiency levels that ideally they should have had entering high school seems to be a backward approach to me. Why not spend a lot of time in seventh and eighth grade preparing students for a high school entrance exam?

The litmus-test 13-year-old I know brought home mostly D’s, F’s and “unsatisfactory” ratings on her eighth-grade report cards earlier this year at an upscale, if overcrowded, charter middle school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The only consequences: She was banned from walking through a cap-and-gown graduation and from attending a class night at Disneyland. She was “passed” on to freshman status at a charter high school even with failing grades and uncooperative classroom behavior.

The odds are stacked against my daughter being able to learn and succeed in the high school she will enter this fall, even with summer school and the likelihood she will continue to get private tutoring.

In the sixth grade, this same child tested one or two grades above grade level in all of her subjects. She was in an “honors” program in her middle school.

Most of my daughter’s academic problems are of her own making; she was given a lot of extra help from teachers and a dedicated study-skills counselor. However, the school could have provided more help in the way of expectations and preparation, making it clear that she would have to pass a proficiency test to matriculate.

A 12th-grade exit exam will do my kid no good when she is not equipped to be in high school in the first place. She is in serious danger of not making it to her senior year in high school, and that is both very sad and preventable.