155 seniors get one more shot at test

Students must pass the California High School Exit Exam next month in order to receive diploma.The Newport-Mesa Unified School District has 155 seniors who have not passed the California High School Exit Exam, assessment director Peggy Anatol announced this week after test results came back from November.

This year, for the first time, all high school seniors not in special education must pass the exit exam to graduate. Students across California last took the test in November and will have one more chance in March before the school year ends.

Before the state released the latest scores, Newport-Mesa had 212 seniors who had not passed the exam, most of whom were either English-learners or special-education students. Fifty-seven of those students mastered the test in November. Newport-Mesa’s entire senior class comprises about 1,600 students.

“We were pleased with our pass rate,” Anatol said, noting that the district has only about a dozen seniors who were neither disabled nor English-learners and had not passed the exam.

Out of the 155 still to go, Anatol said 55 are in special education and 93 are English-learners, with little overlap between the two groups. In January, a Senate bill granted leeway to special-education students by letting them graduate without the exit exam, provided that they completed all their class units, took the exam at least twice and met other criteria.

Anatol said Newport-Mesa is reviewing the 55 special-education students’ cases to determine which ones are eligible to receive a diploma.

“It’s not carte blanche,” she said. “It is a set of criteria that students must meet, and we’re in the process of analyzing who meets that.”

In the meantime, each high school campus in Newport-Mesa is offering remediation classes to prepare the remaining seniors for the March exam. In the fall, the district offered remediation courses after school and during lunch and conference periods, but this spring the classes became part of the regular schedule.

Tom Antal, principal of Estancia High School, said he hopes to institute a permanent exit-exam-preparation class, preferably for students further away from graduation.

“I’d advocate it before the senior year,” Antal said. “I don’t want them to panic.”

Costa Mesa High School Principal John Garcia said his campus has 34 seniors taking the remediation class. Most of them, he said, are English-learners.

“They just have not had time to grasp academic English at the level that will help them pass the ... [exit exam],” Garcia said. “We know we are teaching kids English quickly and efficiently. It’s just a question of what their particular functioning level is now and how far we can get them in the next six weeks.”

* MICHAEL MILLER covers education and may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or by e-mail at michael.miller@latimes.com.

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