"Palinoscopy" required for High School Students

Sarah Palin, according to news reports, has joined the Fox Commentary Team... A person who could not cite the newspapers that she allegedly read is going to comment on the important affairs of the day.

The NYT has an an article titled "States Lower Test Standards for a High School Diploma."

Some interesting and thought-provoking extracts: "...A law adopting statewide high school exams for graduation took effect in Pennsylvania on Saturday, with the goal of ensuring that students leaving high school are prepared for college and the workplace. But critics say the requirement has been so watered down that it is unlikely to have major impact.

The situation in Pennsylvania mirrors what has happened in many of the 26 states that have adopted high school exit exams. As deadlines approached for schools to start making passage of the exams a requirement for graduation, and practice tests indicated that large numbers of students would fail, many states softened standards, delayed the requirement or added alternative paths to a diploma....

Nonetheless, responding to fervent opposition from legislators, teachers unions and advocates for parents who feared a loss of local control, Pennsylvania opted in October to allow school districts to substitute their own versions of the exit exams, with state approval, and to give students who fail multiple times alternative paths to graduation.

The rules in Pennsylvania require students to pass at least four courses, with the end-of-course exams counting for a third of the course grade. If students fail an exam or a section of an exam, they will have two chances to retake it. If they cannot pass after that, they have the option of doing a subject-specific project that is approved by district officials.

The exams are not cheap. Education officials in Pennsylvania estimate it will cost $176 million to develop and administer the tests and model curriculum through 2014-15, and about $31 million to administer each year after that.

Also among those states using end-of-course exams is Arkansas, where seventh, eighth or ninth graders will this year for the first time be required to pass the end-of-course Algebra I test to qualify for a diploma. Critics of Arkansas’s system say it fails to show true math proficiency because students have only to score 24 out of 100 to pass the test and those who fail will be granted two additional chances to take the test. After that, they can take a computerized tutorial that is followed by a test....

That same year state education officials in Alabama approved an emergency rule allowing students to graduate if they passed just three sections of the exit test, rather than all five, as long as two were math and reading.

Washington lawmakers also eliminated the math section of the final exit exam in 2008 in favor of math exams to be administered at the end of each course..."

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Makes any Educator and anyone Educated Wince...