High School Exit Exams :: Argumentative Persuasive Education Essays

High School Exit Exams Exit Exams are an unfair way of determining whether a student should or should not receive his or her diploma. Most students work very hard throughout high school to receive good grades. This should be enough to determine whether a student should pass high school. There are many intelligent students which do not have good test taking skills, exit exams keep many good students from graduating and teachers have to narrow their lesson plans for these types of exit exams. These are all good reasons why exit exams should not be required in graduating from high school. When it comes to test taking, some students do not know how to remain calm. Many times when students fail a test it was not because they did not understand the material on the test, it is because students do not contain good test taking skills. Taking a test can be very nerve wrecking and uncomfortable. A student from Paris (texas) High School said, "some people get testaphobia, I passed my math classes with flying colors, but I get to that TAAS test and my mind's like a blank, I have no idea why." (Kunen 62). TExas is one of the 22 states that requires a high school exit exam like the TAAS test. Every year many students are kept from graduating high school because of these exit exams. This makes students and parents very angry. Students who have had high passing grades throughout high school do not understand why they cannot pass exit exams. Sometimes the student blames him or herself by thinking that he or she did not learn enough, when in fact there is nothing wrong without heir knowledge. These students do not realize that they lack good test taking skills. Parents are angry that their child was kept from graduating because of a single test, even though the child had all the he credits required. This situation occurred to Lee Hicks, another student from Paris (texas) High School. Had he lived 14 miles away in Oklahoma, which has no statewide exit test, he'd have received a diploma and would now be serving his country in the Navy. Instead Hicks severs customers in a Paris supermarket; he won management's Aggressive Hospitality Award for 1996. "He's a great employ ee, a bright young man--extremely hardworking," says store director, Larry Legg.