California High School Proficiency Exam Bias?
Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 10:16 pm
Our oldest just took this exam last month. (http://www.chspe.net/)
One part of the exam is an essay. The essay score is combined with the English multiple choice score. If one of the scores is not high enough, then the student will not get a passing grade.
When our daughter was going to take the exam, her only concern was that the writing portion would be a subject that she couldn't identify with, as a homeschooler. Well, her concern was realized when she took the exam. She was to write an essay, pretending that she was a member of the graduation committee for her class, and she had to persuade the other members of the committee to go with her recommendation for who should speak at the graduation ceremony. Well, she knows nothing of the traditional school "class" and their committees. She re-created her essay as far as what she could remember, and gave it to me (the testers will not give us a copy of her original). She was only somewhat off topic. She "made up" a person and a college graduating class and a committee. She still wrote a persuasive essay with her recommendation for who should speak at the event, it just wasn't in the way that the traditional schooler would have done it. She is a wonderful writer, and writes all the time. Her sentence structure and such, is much better than mine! -that may not be saying much-LOL! But, really, she's good!
We received her results, and as we expected, she did very well in all areas. That is, all areas except the essay. Because they gave her such a low score on the essay, they completely disregarded the fact that she got a nearly perfect score on the multiple choice part of the English portion of the exam. Because of this, they did not allow her to pass the English portion.
We are challenging the score, but I don't know if they will cooperate. We will have her take the exam again, if need be. If not for anything else, but to prove our point.
We know that this is just another way for the public school system to try to bring down the homeschoolers in our state. The topic should be something that everyone can identify with.
Does anyone have any suggestions or have any of you had any similar experiences? What have you done, or what would you do?
Sorry this post is so long!
Thanks for any input.
One part of the exam is an essay. The essay score is combined with the English multiple choice score. If one of the scores is not high enough, then the student will not get a passing grade.
When our daughter was going to take the exam, her only concern was that the writing portion would be a subject that she couldn't identify with, as a homeschooler. Well, her concern was realized when she took the exam. She was to write an essay, pretending that she was a member of the graduation committee for her class, and she had to persuade the other members of the committee to go with her recommendation for who should speak at the graduation ceremony. Well, she knows nothing of the traditional school "class" and their committees. She re-created her essay as far as what she could remember, and gave it to me (the testers will not give us a copy of her original). She was only somewhat off topic. She "made up" a person and a college graduating class and a committee. She still wrote a persuasive essay with her recommendation for who should speak at the event, it just wasn't in the way that the traditional schooler would have done it. She is a wonderful writer, and writes all the time. Her sentence structure and such, is much better than mine! -that may not be saying much-LOL! But, really, she's good!
We received her results, and as we expected, she did very well in all areas. That is, all areas except the essay. Because they gave her such a low score on the essay, they completely disregarded the fact that she got a nearly perfect score on the multiple choice part of the English portion of the exam. Because of this, they did not allow her to pass the English portion.
We are challenging the score, but I don't know if they will cooperate. We will have her take the exam again, if need be. If not for anything else, but to prove our point.
We know that this is just another way for the public school system to try to bring down the homeschoolers in our state. The topic should be something that everyone can identify with.
Does anyone have any suggestions or have any of you had any similar experiences? What have you done, or what would you do?
Sorry this post is so long!
Thanks for any input.