Money to help students pass exit exam OK'd
By Laurel Rosenhall -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:01 am PDT Friday, June 30, 2006
A small sliver -- less than 1 percent -- of the $131 billion budget the Legislature approved Tuesday is supposed to help struggling students pass the California High School Exit Exam.
Wow. I'm sure you can find it as easily as I can.
Let's see, 1% of $131 billion is, uh--hold on here, I can do it, I'm a math teacher--over $1.3 billion. And since California has about 37 million citizens, this author is complaining that each citizen of California isn't paying an additional $35.40 to "help struggling students pass the California High School Exit Exam." That's in addition to all the money those citizens already paid towards the education of those "struggling students".
Let's look at it another way. There were about 42,000 seniors who hadn't passed the exit exam a month ago. So again, this newspaper reporter seems to lament the fact that Californians aren't spending over $1.3 billion--that's $30,952 on each senior who didn't pass--in addition to the thousands spent on each of those seniors each year they were supposed to be getting an education!
This reporter is an idiot.
How much additional money is going to be spent? Only $287 million. Had that money been spent this past school year instead of this upcoming school year, that would have been over $6,800 per senior who didn't pass the test. That's a large percentage of per-pupil spending for an entire year of public education here in California! And that's to pass a test that's geared mostly at a 7th grade math level (there are some 8th grade Algebra I questions) and no more than a 10th grade language level.
This reporter seems to think money grows on trees or something. Or she has no math abilities at all. Maybe she even has no number sense.
Or she's just an idiot.
6 comments:
The state of California gave all of us Rio kids an expensive study guide to help us pass the exit exam our sophomore year. I never opened it, nor did any of my friends. We all passed the exam on the first try. Perhaps the state should work to weed out giving materials to students who don't really need them. How much money was wasted just at Rio with those brochures? Mine landed in the garbage pail. Perhaps they should at least ask us to return/not take them if we don't plan to use them.
How about they only send them to student's whose prior standardized test scores might indicate a problem passing the test?
Imagine all the education money that would be freed up if they took this "combined" suggestion of ours, anonymous. Good one!
When we pow-wowed recently, I told you about reporter Laurel Rosenhall. She has been on the side (to a fault) of the Exit Exam flunkies the whole way.
The more I read this, Darren, the more I gotta admit, I agree completely.
So you see? It's possible.
I'm glad it is, NYC Educator. I'm sure that if you read more of my posts, you'd find we agree on many other things as well. And if we don't, I'm sure my positions on some topics would surprise you. It's all part of that "thinking for myself" thing; I don't need to spout other people's talking points, I like to think I'm smart enough to think for myself.
I generally give others the benefit of the doubt there, until they prove me wrong. My first question to zealots whose opinions are counter to mine: Is it possible for a reasonable person to hold the views I do and *not* be a bigot, homophobe, misogynist, racist, or whatever the most popular adjective the lefties throw at the righties is? If the person responds "yes", then we can have a decent conversation. If the person responds "no", then I see no reason to discuss things further.
You've brought up this point that we can agree on two blogs now. I hope I haven't given you reason to think I attack you personally. I only attack ideas with which I disagree; people generally have to harm me before I attack. You haven't harmed me, and I rather doubt you want to or will.
I agree there, too. The only thing I have to add, though, is that name-calling occurs on both sides of the fence.
I'd prefer it didn't, and that we could all treat one another like grownups.
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