California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE)

Text Updated: 10/5/2009

The California High School Exit Exam is primarily used as a graduation requirement in California, but the results of this exam are also used to determine Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for high schools, as required by the Federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. The CAHSEE has an English language-arts section and a math section and, for purposes of calculating AYP, three performance levels were set: Advanced, Proficient, and Not Proficient. The score a student must achieve to be considered Proficient is different than the passing score for the graduation requirement. The first table displays the percent of students achieving at the Proficient or Advanced level for the past three years. The second table displays the percent of students, by group, achieving at each performance level in English language-arts and math separately for the most recent testing period.