Hundreds More Pass California High School Exit Exam

At the end of October, California State Superintendent Jack O' Connell told members of the press outside Santa Monica High School that 819 more students passed the California High School Exit Exam during the July administration of the test.
Students who had not passed the High School Exit Exam during past administrations of the test, had one last opportunity to take the test in July in order to receive their high school diploma.

The California High School Exit Exam has been a source of contentious debate especially since the graduating Class of 2006 in high schools throughout the state, was the first class required to pass the exam if they expected to graduate from high school this past year. All classes thereafter are also expected to pass the Exit Exam if they want a high school diploma.
The debate over the fairness of the exam has even spawned lawsuits against the state superintendent.

In the most recent lawsuit (Valenzuela v. O'Connell), O'Connell appealed an Alameda Supreme Court Judge's ruling against the High School Exit Exam and the State Court of Appeals overturned the lower court ruling.
The win for the state upheld the Department of Education's main concern that there be a standardized way of measuring whether a student should receive a diploma at the end of their public school education, and this is where much of the debate over the exam lies.

Some parents, teachers and students argue the exam is unfair to some students who do not test well under standardized testing methods (as with the state's already existing STAR exams held each spring). Incidentally, this same group argues, the information students are tested on should not be deciding factors for whether somone moves on past high school.
However, with the number of high school dropouts within the Los Angeles Unified School District, students (and their parents) should indeed be held accountable for learning something in high school.