ShareThisCalifornia celebrates diversity and individualism as virtues, but oddly, when it comes to public education, we try to stuff 6 million students from countless ethnic, cultural, linguistic and economic backgrounds into rigidly constructed curricula and expect them to adhere uniformly to arbitrary "standards."
This approach -- imposed by adults for their own reasons -- manifests itself in such fallacious policies as compelling all students in some districts to take college prep classes, denigrating vocational and other nonacademic offerings and, most illogically, decreeing that no one can obtain a high school diploma without passing a so-called "exit exam."
Such one-size-fits-all policies undermine the very essence of education, which should be to provide students with widely varying aptitudes, talents, interests, aspirations and, yes, intelligences with the opportunity to develop to their fullest potentials, whatever they may be.
Not surprisingly, that approach has failed miserably. California ranks near the bottom in nationwide achievement tests of basic skills. At least a quarter of its students don't make it through high school -- more than 50 percent in some districts.
Stanford University has been at the forefront of conducting deep research into California's educational shortcomings, most notably a 1,700-page study a few years ago calling for a top-to-bottom reform, which so far has been ignored by politicians whose interest in education begins and ends with money.
Stanford's Institute for Research on Education Policy has released a new study, this time zeroing in on the high school exit exam that was finally implemented a few years ago after several false starts, concluding that it's been a bust.
The study found no evidence that exit exams had elevated overall academic achievement. It did determine that female, African American and Latino students under-perform on the mathematics portion of the test, while all non-white students do relatively poorly on the English language portion.
"The exit exam has reduced graduation rates among girls and students of color in the lowest- performing quartile by nearly 20 percentage points," says a synopsis of study findings.
One aspect of the Stanford study's findings is what researchers call the "stereotype threat," defined as the extra stress on female and nonwhite students to do well on tests, fearing that failure would confirm negative stereotypes.
California's education crisis will not be solved by quick fixes such as exit exams, no matter how superficially appealing they may be. The earlier Stanford studies showed the way -- policies based on sound research into what really works in the classroom and what doesn't, backed up by enough money to provide the varied curricula that an infinitely diverse student population requires.
Schools, after all, are supposed to benefit kids -- and the state -- not be an arena for adults' ideological jousting.
(E-mail Dan Walters at dwalters(at)sacbee.com. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
ColumnMust credit Sacramento Bee
