Venice High Beats LAUSD on Exit Exam, Trails State

If Venice High's 10th-grade class was given a grade, it would get a C+.

Nearly 80 percent of the class of 2013 passed the English-language arts component of the California High School Exit Examination this year, and 80 percent passed in mathematics, according to preliminary results published by the California Department of Education on Wednesday. 

These scores put Venice High ahead of the LAUSD average, which was 75 percent for both subjects, but slightly behind the state average, which was 83 percent for mathematics and 86 percent for English-language arts.

In order to receive a high school diploma from a public school in California, most students must pass both parts of the exit exam. (Students with disabilities are required to take the test in 10th-grade,  but they are not required to pass in order to receive their diploma.)

In California, all public high school students take the exit exam for the first time in 10th grade. If they do not pass, they can take the exam again the following years. 

Venice High: Gender, race/ethnicity and socioeconomic highlights

• Girls and boys at Venice High performed equally on the mathematics component of the test, but girls outperformed their male colleagues on the English-language arts section, with 83 percent of girls passing to just 72 percent of boys.
• Broken down by race/ethnicity, the results had the Hispanic/Latino subgroup scoring the lowest, with 72 percent passing in mathematics and 75 percent passing in English-language arts.
• The Filipino subgroup scored the highest, with 91 percent passing in mathematics and 100 percent passing in English. It's worth noting that this subgroup represented only 11 students.
• More than 90 percent of Asian and white students passed both components of the test.
• Black students at Venice High were almost precisely representative of the school's overall population, with 82 percent passing in mathematics and 78 percent passing in English-language arts. Black students at Venice High did much better than their counterparts across the district (only 65 percent of black students in the LAUSD passed in mathematics and 68 percent passed in English-language arts) and across the state (68 percent in mathematics, 72 percent in English-language arts).
• Only 27 percent of the English-learner students passed the English-language arts test.
• However, 90 percent of "Reclassified Fluent English Proficient" (former English-learners who have tested fluent) passed the English-language arts exam, outperforming their "English only" counterparts.
• Low-income students were significantly less likely to pass than more affluent students in both mathematics (75 percent to 88 percent) and English-language arts (71 percent to 92 percent), except for the Asian subgroup of "economically disadvantaged" students. Ten out of 11 students in that group passed the mathematics test and all 11 passed the English-language arts test.

Statewide: Class of 2011

• Statewide data for the class of 2011, which began taking the exit exam two years ago, was also released Wednesday.
• Statewide, 95 percent of this year's graduating class passed the exit exam. Of these students, 69.9% passed in 10th grade. By comparison, 82.4% of this year's 10th-grade test takers passed. 
• Across the state, about 82 percent of  English learners had passed the exam by graduation.

Statewide: Closing the gap

• Although passing rates across the board have gone up in recent years,  passing rates for students in the black and Latino/Hispanic subgroups are increasing more quickly (7.2 and 6.8 percent increases from 2004 to 2011, respectively) than for their white counterparts (a 1.1 percent increase). But as reported above, an achievement gap between these groups still exists.
• Likewise, the rate of passing for low-income students has increased faster (approximately 15 percent higher now than for the class of 2006) than the rate for students who were not economically disadvantaged (approximately 10 percent higher now). 

All data is from the California Department of Education.