Inside School Research, an excellent new blog at Education Week, has a more thorough analysis of the study on the California Exit Exam I posted about earlier today.

Here’s a quote from the blog, though I’d strongly recommend you read the entire post:

 

“The report posted online today by Stanford University’s Institute for Research on Education Policy and Practice confirms some of the critics’ worst fears. It shows that the exit exam led to an overall decline in graduation rates of 3.6 to 4.5 percentage points in the years after the policy took effect, yet without producing a strong effect on student achievement on other state tests.

Among females in the bottom achievement quartile, graduation rates fell by 19 percentage points after the high-stakes exam policy was put in place. That compares with a drop of 12 percentage points over the same period for male students with similar academic profiles.

Likewise, the poorest-performing black, Hispanic, and Asian-American students saw their graduation rates decline by 15 to 19 percentage points following the enactment of the exit-exam policy. The comparable graduation-rate decrease found among white students, in comparison, was a mere 1 percentage point.”