2013–14 California High School Exit Exam Results show pass rates high

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson today announced that the California High School Exit Examination (CAHSEE) rate for the Class of 2014 was 95.5 percent—matching the record high passage rate from last year.
“I am pleased California’s high school students continue to pass this graduation exam at record rates,” Torlakson said. “Dedicated educators have worked hard in difficult times to prepare students for college and careers, but we must keep striving for even higher levels of achievement so all students have the skills, knowledge, and tools they need to be successful.”
The CAHSEE is administered each year to ensure students who graduate from public high schools demonstrate competency in reading, writing, and mathematics. Students who do not pass the CAHSEE in grade ten have two opportunities in grade eleven and up to five opportunities in grade twelve to pass the exam.
The preliminary 2013–14 results are for the July, October, November, and December 2013 and the February, March, and May 2014 test administrations.
The estimated 95.5 percent of the students (totaling 417,960) from the Class of 2014 who met the CAHSEE requirement by the end of their senior year equals the same overall pass rate achieved by the Class of 2013—and represents a 5.1 percentage point increase since 2006, when the test was first required for graduation (Tables 1 and 2).
Students from the Class of 2014 did better than their counterparts from the Class of 2013 when taking the test for the first time as sophomores, when the exam is first given to all tenth grade students. Approximately 74.8 percent of the Class of 2014 passed both the mathematics and English language arts (ELA) portions of the exam on their first attempt—a 1 percentage point increase over first-time test takers in 2013 and a 10.5 percentage point increase over first-time test takers in 2006 (Table 2).
When broken into subgroups, the estimated CAHSEE passage rate for the Class of 2014 was 98.6 percent of white students, 94.2 percent of students from low-income families, 93.8 percent of Hispanic or Latino students, and 80.6 percent of students who are learning English (Table 1).
( Please note: The statewide passing rates in Tables 1, 2, and 3 combine the results for both the mathematics and ELA sections of the CAHSEE. These results are taken from specially prepared reports produced by the CAHSEE independent evaluator, the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO). Other results provided by ETS®, the CDE testing contractor, including those for counties, districts, and schools are not combined and give the percentages of students passing either mathematics or ELA. (To see these tables correctly, please view them in HTML.)
During the 2013-14 CAHSEE administration, 608,720 students took the ELA section with 459,864 passing and 596,043 took the mathematics section, with 461,607 passing.
There is a slight increase in the percentage of students passing the CAHSEE as first-time test takers during their sophomore year. An estimated 83.2 percent of the Class of 2015 (who were eleventh graders this past school year) and 83.2 percent of the Class of 2016 (who were tenth graders this past school year) already have passed the ELA portion of the exam compared to 83 percent of the Class of 2014 (Table 4). For mathematics, the passage rate was 84.1 percent for the Class of 2015 and 85.1 percent for the Class of 2016, compared to 83.6 percent for the Class of 2014 (Table 5).
Overall, long-term progress has been made to narrow the achievement gap between subgroups, but for the Classes of 2015 and 2016, results have been mixed so far. The gap in passage rates between Hispanic and white students in ELA widened between the Class of 2015 and Class of 2016, while it narrowed in mathematics (Table 6). The achievement gap between African American and white grade ten students increased slightly in English language arts and decreased slightly in mathematics (Table 7).
The posting of CAHSEE-related items on social media has been minimal. Similar to last year, a small number of social media postings was identified by the CDE’s testing contractor and taken down immediately with the cooperation of schools and districts. Only three partial test questions and no full test questions were posted and none of the postings had any impact on the exam.
Results for the CAHSEE, which is one of several state and local graduation requirements for all students, will be provided at the school, district, county, and state levels and will be posted on the CDE CAHSEE 2013-14 Summary Results page. Individual student CAHSEE results are confidential and are not included in the Internet posting.
In addition to releasing the CAHSEE results, the CDE is also releasing the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) Reports and the Program Improvement (PI) Reports on the Accountability Progress Reporting Web page.
The CDE is producing 2014 AYP Reports only for high schools and high school districts with enrollment in grades nine, ten, eleven, and/or twelve. High school AYP determinations are based on grade ten CAHSEE and California Alternate Performance Assessment (CAPA) assessment results. Because all California students participated in the Smarter Balanced Field Test, and no assessment results are available for grades three through eight, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) granted a one-year waiver that allows flexibility in making AYP determinations. Therefore, elementary and middle schools and elementary and unified school districts will not receive a 2014 AYP Report. In addition, if these schools and districts were in PI in 2013–14, they will carry over their PI placement to 2014–15.

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