Graduation exam may become tougher

INDIANAPOLIS -- An advisory panel voted Tuesday to recommend that the state raise the score required to pass Indiana's mandatory graduation exam.\nAbout one-third of high school sophomores likely would fail to make the higher score on their first try at the Graduation Qualifying Exam, according to figures provided by the Indiana Education Roundtable.\nOfficials expect about 32 percent to fail the English portion of the test. About 36 percent are expected to fail the math portion, which included algebra for the first time last fall.\nThe state agency adjusted the pass-fail scores recommended by a panel of teachers to achieve those percentages, which are about the same as last year's failure rate, said Wes Bruce, who heads student assessment at the Indiana Department of Education.\nThe percentage of students who pass or fail is a more important number than the score, an expert said.\n"With all the games we play, we're just deciding the percentage of kids that are going to fail," said Lowell Rose, a former Kokomo school superintendent and consultant with the Indiana Urban Schools Association.\nThe higher scores requirement would start with the 50,000 sophomores who took the latest test last fall. The state Board of Education still must vote on the proposal, but the board rarely strays from the Roundtable's suggestions.\nRaising the passing score on the GQE is the latest move to make the earning of a high school diploma more demanding. The panel in October unanimously approved a plan that by 2011 would make college aid and admissions contingent on students earning a Core 40 diploma; a much more stringent academic path.\nEducation officials say such measures are necessary to ensure that Hoosiers have the skills needed to get into college and get good jobs.\nCritics say the tougher standards will make it impossible for some students to graduate regardless of their college plans and doom their chances of making a decent living.\nIndiana Association of School Principals Director Stephen Heck said there was a clear risk that increasing the demands on high school students would increase the dropout rate.\n"We think that risk is very, very real," he said.\nBruce, however, said similar criticisms were aired when the test requirement was linked to diplomas in the late 1990s, but those fears had not materialized. "Just raising the standards ... does not raise the dropout rate," he said.\nThe GQE is the cap of a series of annual standardized tests Indiana students must take beginning in third grade. Sophomores who do not pass both sections on the first try are given four more chances to pass before they finish high school.\nAbout 750 students, or about 1 percent of those who first took the exam in 10th grade, finished high school last year without earning a diploma, Bruce said.\nStudents also can apply for waivers to graduate despite failing the exam, and people who do not pass the test can retake it after they leave high school, though they might have to take remedial classes at their own expense or take free televised courses.