[CALIBK12] California's budget problem: 2 recommendations

[Stephen Krashen]

Published in the Capitol Weekly
October 16, 2008
(Sacramento, California)

Dear Editor,

Anthony York ( Capitol Weekly, Oct. 9, “State budget: The deficit that never seems to end”) quotes Senate Leader Don Perata as saying that “the options are all bad.” Maybe not. Maybe the budget problem will encourage us to save some money by eliminating programs that aren’t doing any good. Here are two that waste student and teacher time as well as wasting money:

The first: The High School Exit Exam. California spends about $250 million each year just for remedial instruction for this exam, and millions more for administration and scoring. Recent research done by scholars at Indiana University has shown that state high school exit exams do not lead to more college completion, higher employment, or higher earnings by graduates. Researchers at UC Davis and the University of Minnesota have reported that exit exams do not result in improved
academic achievement. In fact, researchers have yet to discover any benefits of having a High School Exit Exam.

Second: Forcing second graders to take high-stakes standardized tests. No Child Left Behind does not require testing second graders, and there is no evidence that it does anybody any good, except for test publishers. There is, in fact, no clear evidence showing that high-stakes tests in elementary school result in higher achievement, and it is likely that our teachers are much better at evaluating students than are strangers miles away, some of whom have never spent a day in a room with seven year olds.

Taking these two steps would probably save about a billion dollars every few years, and might inspire similar proposals for additional savings.

Stephen Krashen, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
University of Southern California