LIKE MANY states, Maryland is upping the ante for its high school students.
The class of 2009 is scheduled to be the first group of Maryland students required to pass a tougher set of graduation examinations, the Maryland High School Assessments.
These tests pose a challenge not only for students but also for the state's leaders and educators because these exams have the potential both to help and to harm.
Will Maryland pass the test that it has set for itself?
Policy-makers are searching for answers to the questions, "How do we make a diploma mean something again? How do we improve high schools?"
Increasingly, states are deciding that exit exams are the answer to these questions. According to our Center on Education Policy's second annual study on the nation's high school exit exams, by 2009, exit exams will affect about seven of 10 public school students in the United States and eight of 10 minority students.
But what do we know about the potential benefits and pitfalls of these exams? The answers are inconclusive, but more evidence is accumulating year by year.
On a positive note, exit exams appear to be changing what goes on in schools.
A study of California's exit exam system by the Human Resources Research Organization found that these exams encourage school districts to cover more of the state's standards, what educators and policy-makers have decided it is important for students to know and be able to do.
Districts are also adopting new courses and textbooks to ensure that their teaching fits better with these standards, and they are providing new remedial and supplemental courses for those students who are struggling to meet these standards. These are exactly the types of changes that policy-makers were hoping for when they set these tests in motion.
On the downside, we know that these exams are denying some students diplomas, with probable disastrous consequences.
Failing to receive a high school diploma has profound implications for someone's life. This research is quite clear -- the unemployment rate among these students is higher, their earnings are lower and they have lower ratings on quality-of-life factors such as starting and maintaining a family, participating in civic activities and maintaining good health.
Last spring, thousands of students across the country did not graduate because, while they fulfilled other graduation requirements, they were not able to pass these exit examinations.
