CUSD High School Exit Exam Passage Rates Hold Steady

The percentage of 10th graders who passed the California High School Exit Exam last year stayed about the same as in 2010-11, but Hispanics lost ground while English learners made strides.

The state released the test results Wednesday, which can be found here.

Students must pass the exam, also known as CAHSEE (“kay-see”), to earn a high school diploma. The test is first administered in the 10th grade, and if a student doesn’t pass, he or she has multiple chances to take it again. It tests only English-language arts and mathematics.

Districtwide, 92 percent of all sophomores passed both the math and English portions of the test. That’s the exact figure for the 2010-11 students in math, and off 1 percentage point for English.

Hispanic students, however, lost some ground districtwide. Eighty percent of Hispanic students in the class of 2014 passed both portions of the test. For the class of 2013, those numbers were 82 percent for English and 81 percent for math.

Individual schools that showed a decrease in the passage rate for Hispanic students in English include  in Mission Viejo (78 percent versus 82 percent the year before) and  (82 percent versus 87 percent the year before).

 had the biggest drop in passage rate for the math portion of the test, falling from 83 percent in 2010-11 to 73 percent last year.

Meanwhile, in every comprehensive high school show improvement in at least one of the subject areas, and most in both. Only San Clemente sophomores dipped in math passage rates, from 48 to 42 percent, while San Juan Hills High students dropped from 43 to 42 percent.

There were no measurable results at Tesoro High School in Las Flores because there weren’t enough English learners in 2010-11 to register a statistically calculable passage rate. However, Tesoro English learners in 2011-12 passed the CAHSEE with the highest results of any CUSD school, 62 percent for English and 69 percent for math.

“We are excited about the increased results by our EL students,” Superintendent Joe Farley said in a press release. “This increase is proof that the work our teachers are doing to improve instruction for everyone is working, but we have to continue to evaluate and refine our teaching strategies so that we can ensure that all of our students succeed.”

Here is how the six high schools in Capo performed:

Numbers in bold represent an improvement over last year.

Countywide, Orange County sophomores had a 88 percent pass rate for English, 89 for math. Statewide, those percentages were 83 for English, 84 for math.