The Meaning of a High School Diploma

While carefully following the latest on the New Jersey political front last week, I also had an eye westward on the budget brouhaha in my native state, California. Included in the California budget deal are changes in the California High School Exit Exam policy that could make a big difference for thousands of students with disabilities who, in previous years, have been denied a high school diploma: Under the deal, the exit exam graduation requirement for special education students will be waived, so that special education students in the class of 2009 and, potentially, afterwards would not have to pass the test to graduate. Education officials are currently trying to figure out what to do for the many, many (over 10,000) students with disabilities from the classes of 2008 and 2009 who passed all their graduation requirements except for the exit exam.

As noted in the July 28th SFGate:

The exit exam "has been an unmitigated disaster for thousands of children with disabilities," said Sid Wolinsky, Disability Rights Advocates' director of litigation. "They've earned (a diploma) by every possible measure except this one-size-fits-all standardized exam."

Wolinsky's organization says 16,000 disabled students fail to pass the exit exam each year. Many of them met all other requirements for graduation.

Susan Schneider's autistic son Michael is one of them.

The Vacaville teenager, a high school senior last year, never passed the exit exam and received a certificate of completion in June.

He satisfied every other graduation requirement, but despite multiple tries, he couldn't pass either the math or English portions of the exit exam. He simply couldn't demonstrate his knowledge that way, his mother said.

Michael is going back to school in the fall; he can do so until he is 22, unless, of course, he is able to graduate.

The changes in the exit exam in California recall a small controversy that occurred in June in Vermont, when 18-year-old Todd Geraci was at first not going to be allowed to graduate from the People's Academy in Morrisville. Geraci had not yet completed work included in his individual education program, including social and other goals; Julie Sullivan, Geraci's mother, filed and won a court injunction that required the school to allow him to graduate with his classmates.

A diploma should be something that one earns because one has completed certain requirements. One concern that might be raised about the new changes to the exit exam is that a(n unintentional) message is being sent to special ed students that requirements are being "watered down" for them. On the other hand, being able to graduate with one's fellow classmates and move on in a group, in a community: These are other, perhaps less tangible aspects of a high school diploma that nonetheless mean a lot.

At the moment, I've just been hoping that Charlie can hang on and get through middle school, in one piece (more or less). If his academics continue at the rate they are now (v-e-e-e-r-r-y slow and gradual), Charlie would not be ready to take something like an exit exam, certainly not in subjects like English and Math. When he is ready to graduate according to his age, I think he should receive recognition for making it through all those years, for hanging in there, in a school and setting that's not the most appropriate for his learning needs---certainly, there are challenges and obstacles he's faced and learned to work through that many of us can only imagine.