Scores on high school exit exams drop

Lowcountry students' scores on the state high school exit exam slipped this year after three years of steady gains, according to results released Tuesday by the state Department of Education.

Record numbers of students passed both sections of the test on their first attempt last year, but students fared far worse this year on the English and math exams that they must pass to receive a diploma.

The state saw 76.1 percent of its sophomores pass both sections of the test, down from 80.8 percent last year, and local school districts -- Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester 2 and 4 -- also had lower pass rates than last year.

State Superintendent of Education Jim Rex said in a statement that his agency's testing experts couldn't account for the sudden drop in scores, and he's concerned that the results could be a symptom of the dramatic budget cuts schools have experienced.

"We've been seeing very positive scoring trends, including the highest scores ever just last year," Rex said.

"So these results are not what we expected. But trends are what you look for in student testing, and we'll have to wait a year and see if this is the beginning of a downward trend or just a random blip," he said.

Students take the exit exam for the first time during their second year of high school, and those who fail can retake the parts they did not pass. Schools' performance on the exam is factored into state report card ratings and federal Adequate Yearly Progress ratings.

Charleston schools had the largest drop among the area's three biggest school districts, with its pass rate plummeting 4.7 percentage points to 75.8 percent. It also has the lowest pass rate among those districts.

Janet Rose, the district's executive director of assessment and accountability, said she didn't know why the scores dropped, but the district saw a similar decline in its SAT college entrance exam scores.

While the exit exams are designed to be equally challenging from one year to the next, there's no guarantee that the difficulty is exactly the same, and it's tough to determine whether the drops are an anomaly or a trend, she said.

Suburban Dorchester District 2 schools had the best pass rate among local districts, but their scores also took a nosedive, down 4.5 percentage points to 81.6 percent.

Debi Gilliam, the district's testing director, said school leaders hadn't had a chance to do an in-depth analysis of the scores, but she was surprised that the district's upward and downward trends mirrored the state's so closely.

She said she didn't expect to see these kinds of drops, given that the district didn't make any major changes to its exit exam preparation strategy.

Berkeley schools had the smallest drop in its scores, falling two percentage points to 80.2 percent. Archie Franchini, the district's chief academic officer, said schools continued their previous efforts to boost pass rates, and their focus will remain on ensuring that individual students are successful on the test.

Rural Dorchester 4, which has only one high school, saw its pass rate slip more than six percentage points to 57.7 percent.