CAHSEE Preparation Tips-Reading Comprehension Strategies

One of the best ways to ensure your best performance on the reading comprehension section of the CAHSEE is to understand the basic principles behind the format of the section. You can also increase your chances of success by learning the basic strategies behind the types of questions that can be found within this section.

Read For Understanding

When presented with a longer passage that several other questions will be based upon, make sure to take your time going through the passage to make sure you are reading to understand the passage, as opposed to reading just to get through it. If you make sure to take your time when reading, it increases your ability to understand the passage and decreases the number of times you may need to reread the passage looking for the correct answers.

Check The Questions First

It is sometimes helpful with these types of reading comprehension passages to briefly read the questions first. This will help give you an idea of what type of information you should be careful to take note of when reading the passage. If you have a general idea of the questions in advance, you may be able to spot the correct answers as you read. If you do struggle with a question afterwards, reread the passage again to make sure you haven't overlooked the answer.

Use All Of Your Resources

A portion of the questions on the exam will involve word meanings and definitions. One of the easiest way to determine the meaning of a word if you are unfamiliar with it is to remove the word from the sentence. Use the blank space left behind to try and choose more familiar words that make sense in the sentence in place of the original word. Once you find a word that fits, the meaning of it should make it easier to determine the definition of the original word.

CAHSEE Tips Summary

Following these basic tips will help any student perform better not only on the CAHSEE but also most other standardized exams. 

CAHSEE Resource Information

For students who need help preparing for the California High School Exit Exam, there is one site that stands above the rest. This website is www.AceYourExitExam.com. If you are looking to prepare for the CAHSEE and need help with either the Math or the English section, I would definitely recommend checking out their site. There are several other preparation websites that are out there and if any of you have any experience with those sites please let me know by leaving a comment.

CAHSEE Information

I found a great resource for more information on the California High School Exit Exam. I wanted to share this with you quickly so that you can go and check out the site. The site is called cahsee and its located over on the vox.com site. I want you all to go check out that site and let me know what you think of the information that they present over there. Its great that educators are networking when it comes to helping our kids get past the cahsee and I'm trying to do my part to help as well.

October CAHSEE Results

The majority of schools whose upperclassmen took the California High School Exit Exam(CAHSEE) have received scores from this test date. This means that students will now know whether or not they passed the exam if they took the test in October of 2009. For many students this will mean that they are one step closer to a high school diploma, however, for others this will be yet another disappointment. Scores for students who took the exam in November are not widely available but should be making their ways to schools across the state soon. For those who took the exam in October and November, there is still a chance that they passed the November test.

CAHSEE Related Blogs and Websites

I want to take a few minutes and share a few other CAHSEE resources that are available on the internet. I am not necessarily endorsing everything that is said on these other blogs and websites but I do think that many of them offer lots of good information that can be very beneficial to students and teachers preparing for the CAHSEE. Some of these resources are provided by teachers and some are private companies. This list is in no way meant to be a comprehensive list of CAHSEE related sites but I do plan on updating the entry periodically as I find more resources on different websites. If you know of a great resource that should be included on this site feel free to leave a comment with a link to that resource. I will check out the site and most likely add it to the list. I'll break these down into a few different categories:

Blogs:

My Blog of course: CAHSEE Blog
Another CAHSEE Blog: CAHSEE Blog

WebPages:
A nice CAHSEE prep resource page: CAHSEE prep resources

Articles:
A couple nice CAHSEE Related Articles:
Why the CAHSEE is good for education.
How Teachers Should Approach Teaching CAHSEE Material

Now I know that there are lots more but these are just a couple new ones that I came across that I thought I would share with the rest of you. Be on the lookout for any new resources that pop up and be sure to comment here so that the rest of the CAHSEE community can benefit.

CAHSEE Exemptions

The state of California continues to try and come up with the best way to use the CAHSEE to improve education across the state. They have now made the decision that special education students will be permanently exempt from the CAHSEE graduation requirement. This means that student who are placed in the "special education" programs at various schools will receive diplomas without necessarily having passed the CAHSEE. This could be a major loophole that under-performing schools use to circumvent the CAHSEE. Since the decision on whether to place a student in the special ed program is typically a subjective one, it is not hard to imagine that this could become an increasing trend throughout the state. Let's hope that teachers, counselors, and administrators don't try to exploit this loophole. If the CAHSEE is going to do its job it will need the support of and commitment of high school faculty. This decision has already started to draw the attention of many educators who are in the blogosphere. Click here to read one teachers take on the new policy. Overall it will be important to make sure that the policy is not abused and that struggling students don't get the short end of the stick by being mislabeled as "special ed".

CAHSEE Prep Site, Drop-out Rates, and the Education Debate

This morning as I was surfing the net on the look out for new CAHSEE news or blog entries, I came across a nice post from a site called Ace Your Exit Exam. These guys seem to offer one of the top CAHSEE prep classes on the internet. I went through and looked at a few of their free CAHSEE lessons and I must say that I was pretty impressed. The material was well done and I liked what I saw. I have requested a teachers review series and once I receive it I will be posting some more on the content of their review course. They also have an interesting blog that has lots of CAHSEE related posts. The post from this morning dealt with how the CAHSEE impacts the drop-out rate. After I read the post(and subsequently the article it linked to) it got me thinking about why our schools are failing. Now this is something that I think about quite often and I usually come to the same conclusion. That conclusion inevitably is centered around the nature of the society we live in. Now anytime the problem is as dire as it is in our education system today it is usually the result of decades of mismanagement and downright incompetence. Before I digress too much let me get back to discussing how this relates to the California High School Exit Exam, better known as the CAHSEE. First of all lets just make it plain, the CAHSEE is not a difficult test. It tests basic understanding and implementation of the state content standards. It doesn't require advanced analysis on the part of the test-taker. If the standard is can a student perform 2 digit addition then the problem is something like 32 + 19. Nothing complicated, just can you do it? Now of course the CAHSEE tests standards that are more advanced than 2 digit addition but I use this example to underscore the fact that it is a straight forward test. So if kids fail at the rate that they do, then this tells us that they really aren't learning anything useful in school. This should have our population up in arms but it doesn't. Why not? Well its become accepted and it is always "someone else's problem". People now-a-days have become so complacent and apathetic that tragedies don't even phase them. Again I have digressed but the point here is we as a society don't care. Now some of us do, but as a whole we don't. If we did, there would be an unbelievable amount of outrage that such a high percentage of students can't get 55% on a simple test to demonstrate a basic level of competency prior to leaving high school. Now don't get me wrong there is outrage, it just isn't on the level that it should be. I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on this.

Impacting Drop-out Rate