The Sacramento Bee posted two articles today, Dan Walters: Stanford study of exit exam shows fallacy and Some graduation rates worse with high school exit exam, on how the California High School Exit Exam instituted in 2006 has a disproportionate effect on graduation rates of minorities and young women. These findings are based on a study by the Institute for Research on Education Policy & Practice at Stanford University (IREPP) , “the Stanford study looked at graduation rates for students who stayed in school all four years – both before and after California initiated the exit exam. Since the test became a requirement, the study found, a disproportionate number of those who didn’t graduate because of the test are minorities and girls.” Interestingly, the study attributes these findings to what the IREPP researches call the “stereotype threat.” Essentially, this threat is defined as the extra stress on nonwhite and female students to do well on these exams, so as not to confirm negative stereotypes about their group.