Reply #40: Then you know that the CA exit exam is a joke.

[wtmusic]

It probably would have been the 8th grade exit exam at the school I went to, but even current high school kids regard it as laughably easy. If that's the guarantee you are offering CA parents, to me it's grossly insufficient.

You raise more questions than you answer:

1) Being on the same campus with different teachers but only being taught by one, (or two, or three, I don't quite understand your plan) for four years aren't comparable. And what will your policy be if if one of your fantastic candidates doesn't work out? It happens in the best of situations - and in Los Angeles, for example, the termination rate is only slightly better than NY (11 per year with 35,000 teachers).

2) If you've worked in a Title 1 school you know that the neediest students don't do ANY homework and still get passed so they won't drop out (even in some public schools, it's about the money). Do you have any studies you can cite to show students will actually review anything when they get home? Why would they, if they can come to school the next day and get Tommy Smartypants to "collaborate" with them? What's going to prepare them for the homework they'll be expected to do if they go to college?

3) As a parent, does 'allowing students to discover their own abilities' mean my kid is going to understand fractions when he graduates? Will he understand enough civics to know how 'environmentally sound local policies' are enacted? Again, is the CA exit exam the benchmark?

4) Have you worked up a budget? It sounds like it's going to cost about twice as much as what's typically available based on ADA minus Title 1.

I'm really not trying to be antagonistic, but there are already many reasons why the animal you describe doesn't exist.