David Copeland
Staff Writer
Mira Costa sophomores took the California High School Exit Exam on Feb. 1 and 2 with a new schedule. The CAHSEE is the state mandated exam that all students must take to graduate from high school.
Mira Costa has consistently performed well on the CAHSEE. In order to raise test scores, sophomores took the test spread out over two days while the rest of the school started the day at 10 a.m.
“It was a change from past practice. We had some facility and personnel issues with the administration of the test in the past. After the STAR schedule with homeroom proved successful, including the third day with tenth grade life science test, we decided to use that schedule for CAHSEE as well. It was a much smoother administration as a result,” Vice Principal Jaime Mancilla said.
A larger number of test-takers did not finish the test within the allocated amount of time.
“Students that did not finish within the first two hours of the test had to finish at another location. In the past, we hadn’t had such a large number not finished so it wasn’t an issue. On the first day we had to find more room for the students that didn’t finished than anticipated. On the second day, we had this issue addressed and it ran even more smoothly,” Mancilla said.
The administration gets the results of the test in April, and students will receive their scores when the administration mails their tests back.
“The fact that 97-98% of our entire sophomore students pass the first time around says that we’re an amazing school,” Mancilla said.
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