California high school students who will graduate in 2004 school-year and thereafter will have to pass an exit exam to graduate. This will be an eight-hour exam in math and English.

If a student takes the test in ninth grade and does not pass it, that student can take the test each year until she/he passes it. Certainly, a student doesn't want to take it at 12th grade and not pass it.

There have been threats of lawsuits for allowing ninth-graders to take the test. The fear seems to be that if this year's ninth graders take the test, the pool of takers would be too small; those ninth graders have just started high school and have not yet covered much of the material in the test. Another fear is that allowing ninth-graders to take the test would be unfair to them and future takers because they would set the standard for all others.

A number of students would like to get the test out of the way; some want to just see how they will do; some want to know ahead of time whether they pass or not, so they will know what they have to do to pass it; and some are afraid they won't know the materials.

California parents have received notice that their children will have to pass this exam to graduate from high school; yet the State Education Secretary and the legislature are in a state of confusion about the test--when should it be taken, and what are the consequences of some students not passing the exam?

The issues of this required exam are not certain yet. One thing seems certain is that law suits will occur when those students not passing it are told that they cannot graduate.

The state may turn to another mixture of this exam with other exams during a student's course-work to determine if a student will graduate. Some California community colleges already have a modified English exit-exam that must be taken; it is only a part of a student's overall grade. []