Thousands of Nevada students need help on graduation exams

Terry Webster

Monday, Nov. 29, 1999 | 11:32 a.m.

Some Nevada high school students still have a ways to go before earning their high school diplomas.

Statewide, 1,993 seniors still need to pass reading and 5,165 seniors need to boost their math performance on the High School Proficiency Exam before they can graduate, according to Mary Peterson, the state superintendent of public instruction.

In October 3,166 seniors took the reading exam and 37 percent passed it. In math 26 percent of the 7,040 seniors taking the exam passed it.

"To date, what this translates into is approximately 90 percent of seniors have passed reading and approximately 70 percent have passed math," Peterson said. There are about 20,000 seniors statewide.

Students have to pass all three portions of the test -- reading, math and writing -- in order to graduate.

Seniors will have three more chances to take the test, Peterson said. Over a two-year period, juniors and seniors have about seven opportunities to take it.

Another section of the state's report shows that minorities performed lower than white students on the proficiency exam.

Among those who took the test in October, 50.9 percent of white students passed the reading portion and 34.7 percent the math. In contrast, only 26.4 percent of Hispanic and 25.4 percent of black students passed the reading, and 18 percent of Hispanics and 13.5 percent of blacks passed the math. Some 34.3 percent of Asians and Pacific Islanders, 34.3 percent and 34.7 of American Indian and Eskimo students passed the reading, with 27.8 percent and 21.1 percent respectively passing the math.

Minorities in the junior class who took the test in October -- their first shot at the test -- fared better than their senior counterparts, many of whom were taking the test for the third or fourth time.

Among Hispanics 46 percent passed the reading and 27 percent the math, followed by 46.8 percent of blacks passing reading and 23.8 the math, 68.1 percent of Asians and Pacific Islanders passing reading and 56.3 percent the math, and 58.7 percent of American Indians and Eskimos passing reading and 28.4 the math.

White juniors had a 78.5 percent passing rate on the reading and 60.4 percent on the math.

"One criticism that has been made is that the test is biased," Peterson said. "We do have a review committee that looks at questions for any bias toward gender or race. We don't use any questions that are biased."

Peterson added that minority students who do not perform well typically are not taking the kinds of courses needed to pass the High School Proficiency Exam.

In October 1998, 73.3 percent of juniors passed the reading portion of the test and 49.1 percent passed math. Last October only 68.5 percent of juniors made the grade in reading, followed by 49.9 percent in math.

"We're concerned about the numbers, but that happens when standards are raised," Peterson said.

For juniors in the Clark County School District taking the High School Proficiency Exam for the first time in October, about 66 percent passed reading and 49 percent passed math.

Mary Stanley-Larsen, district spokeswoman, said the Secondary Education Division is providing intense remediation for juniors and seniors who will be retaking the math test.

Three weeks of remediation will be offered at 16 sites before the next test in February, Stanley-Larsen said. The remediation will involve reviewing the test's math concepts and facts, including ratio and proportion, percentages, probability, statistics and geometry. Students also will receive assistance on improving their test preparation skills.

Other initiatives under way to help students include matching what is being taught at the middle school level to match state standards. Also, English as a second language teachers are getting more training.

Data analysis and problem-solving skills are two frequently missed questions on the math exam, said Peterson.

She cites a specific data analysis problem missed by 38 percent of students on a prior exam. The math problem shows a chart listing the populations of Detroit and Los Angeles from 1920 to 1970. Students are asked how many more people were living in Los Angeles in 1960, when the population was 2,500,000, than in 1940, when it was 1,500,000. The answer is 1,000,000.

On problem-solving skills -- the dreaded word problems -- a question that gave students problems involved computing the amount three people would pay for evenly splitting a bill of $36.48. Only 42 percent of students got the correct answer, $12.16.