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Contributor
Ray
Haynes
Mr.
Haynes is an Assembly member representing Riverside and
Temecula.
He serves on the Appropriations and Budget Committees. [go to
Assembly Member Haynes
website at California Assembly][go to Haynes index]
 It’s
Still A Mess
California’s educational system is an ongoing failure…
[Ray
Haynes] 4/14/05
In the next
several weeks, newspapers will write a number of stories on recent
efforts of the education establishment to change
the law on the exit exam. For those who don’t know, the
exit exam is the real education reform to come out of the Davis
years in the capitol, and its purpose is to make sure that high
school students actually have a high school education before
they graduate from high school. Every high school student this
year will be required to pass the high school exit exam, which
tests whether that student can demonstrate a ninth grade level
of competence in core subject areas. Unfortunately, about 40
per cent of the high school students who are attempting to graduate
this year have failed the exam.
It’s not like
this was any great surprise. The Legislature passed, and the
Governor signed, the bill requiring the exit
exam in 1999, and said that it would take effect in 2005. That
gave the education establishment 6 years to prepare. In addition,
in 2000, the state started administering the test, and found
that 80 per cent of the students could not pass it. That means,
in 2000, four-fifths of the students who graduated from high
school did not have a ninth grade education, according to the
standards in place then. The Davis administration, and then-Superintendent
of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin, responded quickly by changing
how the test was graded to make it easier to pass. In other words,
instead of holding the education establishment responsible for
their monumental failure, the state, through Davis and Eastin,
made it easier to hide the failure. They then dumped billions
of dollars more into the system.
Now, with the easier
test, only 40 per cent of the children are failing. Can you
imagine what the Democrats would do if almost
half of the cars that GM produced were defective? The trial lawyers
would have a field day in court; there would be legislative hearings,
press conferences, and shoe pounding on the tables of the Legislature
on a daily basis. So—how are the Democrats responding to
the abject failure of the education establishment? They are trying
to remove the requirement that children pass an exit exam.
The purpose of the
exit exam is not to punish the children who are in the education
system. Its purpose is to make sure
that the adults are doing their jobs. If children are not learning,
it is not the child’s fault, it is the fault of the teachers,
principals, administrators, and school boards who are letting
that child move along without learning basic skills. Since the
union spends most of its time and money making sure that bad
teachers don’t get fired, it is appropriate to blame it
for the current failures in the system.
These groups want
money without responsibility. Don’t
hold us accountable, their commercials say, just give us more
money. When the Governor said we are going to pay good teachers
more than bad teachers and no guaranteed jobs for bad teachers,
the unions started running commercials calling the Governor heartless,
and demanding more money. Now they are trying to hide the whole
reason for the Governor’s actions—that is—they
are doing a bad job, as evidenced by the exit exam results.
They are shameless. The system is a mess and a failure, and
they continue to justify that failure so that they can make money
off of it without accountability. All the while, our children
are suffering. CRO
Mr.
Haynes is a California Assembleyman representing Riverside
and Temecula and frequent contributor to CaliforniaRepublic.org.
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