The study, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, compared the senior classes of 2006 and 2007, the first two required to pass the exit exam to graduate, with the class of 2005.

The reading portion gives students passages of text followed by multiple-choice questions that test their ability to find and analyze information in the text. The essay portion tests students ...

Published April 22, 2009•Updated on April 23, 2009 at 7:24 am A new study by Stanford University finds that California 's high school exit exam prevents a disproportionate number of girls and ...

As early as fourth grade, students who will be at risk of failing the high school exit exam -- a state requirement to earn a diploma -- can be identified based on grades, classroom behavior and ...

Indeed, it finds that three-quarters of the nation’s high school students now live in exit-exam states. Only half did when the CEP did its first exit-exam study in 2002.

Passing the exit exam became a requirement for all seniors in 2006, but lawyers from Disability Rights Advocates in Berkeley won exemptions for special-education students in 2006 and 2007.

In Oakland, about half of kids graduated on average between 2001 through 2005. In 2006, the year the test went into effect, only 37 percent graduated, according to the study.