Berkeley students do well on Exit Exam

Public high-school students must pass the English language arts and mathematics sections of the new High School Assessment Program to meet the exit examination requirement for a South Carolina diploma. The tests are initially administered in the students’ second year of high school, and students who do not meet the exit examination requirement have additional opportunities to retake the test they did not pass.

Of the more than 50,000 10^th-graders who took the second statewide administration of HSAP in spring 2005, 71.8 percent passed both sections by scoring at Level 2 or higher on the test’s four achievement levels. 75.2 percent of Berkeley 10^th-graders passed both sections on the first attempt.

State Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum said it wasn’t possible to draw any broad conclusions from the 2005 scores.

"This is only the third year of scores from our new exit exam," Tenenbaum said. "We saw a big increase between the 2003 HSAP field test and the first statewide administration in 2004, and now we have this small decrease in 2005. Ultimately what you want to see is improvement over time, a positive, long-term trend. That’s the goal."

About half of the states require high school students to pass an exit exam, in addition to earning the state-mandated number of course credits, to earn a diploma.

In addition to functioning as South Carolina’s high school exit exam, HSAP scores also factor into high school Adequate Yearly Progress ratings under the federal No Child Left Behind law, which requires that all students score at a level of Proficient or higher by 2014. According to South Carolina’s NCLB plan, Proficient is equivalent to a score at Level 3 on HSAP’s four performance levels.

In English/Language Arts, 54.5 percent of Berkeley students scored at Level 3 or higher in 2005, down from 59.7 percent in 2004. In math, 45.1 percent scored at Level 3 or higher, down from 54.5 percent in 2004.

HSAP is based on South Carolina’s new rigorous academic standards, which became law in 1998 and which have been rated among the nation’s best. Students get their first opportunity to pass HSAP during their second year of high school and have additional opportunities to retake the exit examination.

At Hanahan High School, 71.8 percent of 10^th-graders passed HSAP on their first attempt. Principal Rodney Thompson anticipates that those scores will improve.

"We have implemented a 5-year plan to get first-attempt HSAP results to over 90 percent," Thompson said. "The 9th grade academy incorporates many of the strategies to improve HSAP scores and we are looking forward to progress in the next two years."