All 10th grade students will be required to take the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) on March 8 and 9 in order to graduate high school. The test will be on the subjects of math and English. Teachers have been preparing their students all year by taking a few days to review the material efficiently.

“I teach Geometry and most of the students are sophomores,” Ms. Barbeau said. “We basically have been reviewing for the CAHSEE since the beginning of the year with daily quizzes as a warm up, which have questions from previous CAHSEE on it.”

About 80% of the 10th graders pass the CAHSEE the first time, and the few who do not were usually only a few points below passing. To increase that percentage, a few math and English teachers have arranged after school tutoring for the students who require extra help.

“Recently, a few 10th grade English classes and I have given a practice CAHSEE,” Ms. Stratford said.  “It consisted of 72 multiple choice questions, which is 5 questions shy from the actual CAHSEE.”

The English portion on the test also requires for the students to write an essay. The essay varies each year in topic and type of writing, whether narrative, persuasive, response to literature, or autobiographical. Teachers have also arranged a CAHSEE boot camp to prepare selected students and to see how well they’ll do on the test.

“I got a good grade on the English part of the practice CAHSEE, so I feel more confident in taking the real one now,” sophomore Amber Torres said.

Teachers feel confident enough to say they’ve done as much as they can to prepare their students for the CAHSEE. Students are anxious for the CAHSEE to be over and done with so they can be one stepping-stone closer to graduation.