Tests on Trial in Florida

A slow "go" for high school competency exams

On 58th Street south of Tampa, Fla., where the houses thin out and the land turns to strawberry and tomato fields, lives Gary Berrien, 17, one of ten children of Ezell, a roofer, and Mildred, an organist at the nearby New Progress Missionary Baptist Church. Gary plays the organ for pay on Sunday at three churches in the neighborhood, but he has not found a full-time job since completing the twelfth grade at Hillsborough High School. He wanted to join the Army but decided against it when a recruiter asked for his high school diploma. Gary had to tell him he did not have a diploma because he had failed to pass the Florida functional literacy test, which this year became a requirement for graduating from high school. Gary had not expected that failure; he had received passing grades for twelve straight years in public school.

Gary's mathematics teacher in the ninth grade, Bobby Crihfield, recalls that Gary was "very quiet, a typical poor student who is passed along from grade to grade." Unaware of Gary's musical ability or his skill in carpentry and woodcarving, Crihfield says he has seen many such students who "reach a plateau once they get to the seventh grade, and they just can't learn any more. I think it's just unfair to try to make them graduate from high school."

But Gary's parents, who say they never received a call or letter about his schoolwork from any of Gary's teachers, see things differently. Says his father: "If he's slow in learning, then I think you should hold him back. Even my little ones--if I don't discipline them early, then I'm going to have problems later. Have they ever asked themselves how a teacher could give a student a passing grade for each of the years he went to school, and then he gets to the eleventh grade and they tell him he's functionally illiterate because he can't pass this test?"

This month Florida Federal District Judge George Carr ordered that a diploma be awarded to Gary, and to others among the 3,445 blacks and 1,342 whites who flunked the literacy test after three tries but were otherwise eligible for graduation. In the first federal court ruling on the new wave of minimal competency graduation requirements, which have been adopted in various forms by 17 states, Judge Carr upheld the graduation requirements in general, but ruled that the Florida program was imposed too hastily. Florida's mandatory literacy test was announced in 1977, while this year's seniors were sophomores. Carr said students should have been told that graduation depended on functional literacy skills "at the time of instruction," well before their sophomore year. Florida, he ordered, could require a passing grade on the test beginning in the 1982-83 school year.

In addition, the judge held that the test discriminated against blacks, most of whom attended segregated schools in Florida as recently as 1971. At first, 77% of blacks failed the literacy test, compared with 24% of whites; after remedial instruction and two more tries, 20% of blacks and 2% of whites still had not passed. "The vestiges of the inferior elementary education [blacks] received still are present and affect their performance," said Carr.

Carr's decision strengthens competency testing in most states, but it also warns that too hasty an imposition of these graduation requirements can discriminate against past victims of segregation. North Carolina gave students three years' notice when its 1980 target date for competency testing was announced in 1977, a schedule almost as short as Florida's. However, North Carolina officials, who will allow students at least five tries at an acceptable score, say that a greater percentage of pupils, black and white, have already passed the state tests.

Eventually, competency testing may improve the lot of the nation's slow learners. For the present, Judge Carr's postponement comes as a great relief to students like Gary Berrien, caught in an awkward transitional period. In Tampa, after the decision was announced, Ezell Berrien, who testified in the case, said: "We're very happy about the ruling. I'm not against testing. I just think it should be done fairly."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.