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The percentage of 10th-grade San Bernardino County students who passed the mathematics and English language arts portions of the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) was the highest in the 10 years the test has been administered, according to data released by the California Department of Education.

In addition, the achievement gap among some demographic and ethnic subgroups closed to the smallest margins since the testing began.

“These are terrific results, and the efforts of our students, as well as their teachers, to make these improvements is commendable,” County Superintendent Gary Thomas said.

“It is also gratifying to note that we are making progress in our efforts to reduce the achievement gap among various subgroups.”

With a record-high of 78 percent of 10th graders passing the English language arts portion of the test during the 2009-10 academic year, sophomores improved by 2 percent on last year’s score. There were 32,556 county 10th-graders who took the English language arts portion of the exam.

In math, 76 percent of 10th graders passed, an improvement of 1 percent over last year. There were 32,467 sophomores who took the test countywide.

In English language arts, a record-high of 74 percent of Hispanic students countywide passed the test, an improvement of 3 percent over last year.

Hispanic students also closed the gap by 1 percent with their White peers, the fourth consecutive year the achievement gap has closed. With a gap of 14 points between the two groups of students, it’s the closest the two subgroups have been in 10 years of testing. The gap has closed from 23 percent in 2000-01 to 14 in 2009-10.

In the achievement gap between African American students and Whites, the gap in English language arts over the past five years has narrowed from a difference of 22 points in 2005-06 to 17 points in 2009- 10. In math, the gap has been reduced from 25 points in 2005- 06 to 20 points in 2009-10. For the class of 2011, which will be the sixth class that will have to pass the CAHSEE in order to graduate from high school, an estimated 88.2 percent of county seniors have passed in ELA and 86.8 percent in math. The California Department of Education estimates that 94.5 percent of all seniors from the class of 2010 statewide passed both portions of the exit exam.

Among the highlights from the results of the 2009-10 CAHSEE:

• African American 10th-grade students continued to show longterm improvement in their passage rates in both portions of the test. In English language arts, African Americans jumped 4 percentage points to a record-high of 71 percent. That is an improvement of 19 percentage points over 10 years. In math, they have improved to a recordhigh passage rate of 66 percent in 2009-10 from 24 percent in 2000-01.

• English language learners in 10th grade improved 2 percentage points to 52 percent in math this year compared to last year’s scores. Economically disadvantaged 10th-graders also improved 2 points in math to a record-high of 71 percent passage rate.

• Among county 10th-graders, females scored better than males in English language arts (83 percent vs. 73 percent), and females also scored better in math (78 percent vs. 75 percent).