Schools

El Toro High's Exit Exam Scores Slip

The state-mandated graduation requirement, the CAHSEE, is first administered in 10th grade.

Tenth-graders at slacked off a bit this year on state-mandated exit exams, which all public school students must pass to graduate high school.

While Orange County and statewide passing rates on the tests rose slightly, El Toro High headed in the opposite direction, according to data released this week by the California Department of Education.

The number of local students who passed the math and English CAHSEE tests slid from 92 percent in 2010 to 90 percent this year.

Find out what's happening in Lake Forestwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Still, El Toro's numbers topped those recorded by Orange County students as whole. For the county overall, 88 percent of students passed both math and English this past school year. Statewide, those numbers were 83 percent for math and 82 percent for English.

The numbers for the Saddleback Valley Unified School District as a whole held steady at 92 percent passing each portion of the exit exam.

Find out what's happening in Lake Forestwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Test results were also broken down by demographics that showed English learners continue to struggle. Passage rates for that group dropped dramatically at El Toro, with just 34 percent of 10th-grade English learners passing the English language-arts portion, down from 48 percent last year. The math passage rate fell from 54 to 46 percent.

Latino students as a whole at El Toro also fell behind their peers, passing at a rate of 74 percent on math and 73 percent on English. Those figures fell below the countywide averages of 79 percent both for English and math. Statewide, 77 percent of 10th-grade Latinos passed math, and 76 passed English.

Students must pass the CAHSEE to earn a high school diploma. They get a first shot at the test in the 10th grade, but if they fail, they have multiple chances to take it again.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here