High School Exit Exam Essay

The high school basic skills exit exams issue to consider has to do with the difficulty that these exams hold the schools and the students accountable for. Students and schools are accountable for the key skills taught and learned in order to graduate from high school. The difficulty of the tests is a major concern since high school exit exams continues to be on the rise. The exit exam has affected two-thirds of the nation public schools considering the 23 states that passed this exam to graduate in 2008. Knowing what to base the curriculum for high school students exit exams on is needed to be examined according to each state content standard goal (Waugh & Gronlund, 2013). This would help students in each state to become better prepared for college or obtain jobs after high school graduation. When
However, passing the high school exit exam doesn’t necessarily mean that students are prepared for college because it only tests skills that should be mastered by completion of the 10th grade. Finding out a way to test students’ knowledge of what they have learned from phasing in other subjects is a great idea because each student has a favorite subject that they like and these courses can surely help the student to demonstrate competency. End-of-course tests will help benefit each student after being in the course half a semester rather than taking specific grade level tests. In other words, taken the test while what they learned is fresh on their minds at the end of the course instead of having to take it at a specific grade level will increased competency. Therefore, putting focus on what the entire content standard of low and high achieving students should be able to do by the end of the course should be considered by the states and districts (Greene& Winters 2004). This way the content may vary some according to each state and their opportunity for