American students are failing to demonstrate expected competency on basic skills taught in schools. The educational system needs a major overhaul to address declines in scholarly engagement. The State Board of Education (SBE) designed the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) to give some merit to the high school diploma. Minorities and economically disadvantaged students fail to attain minimal proficiency levels on standardized tests and to achieve gains comparable to those attained by students from affluent school districts, even when the most rudimentary skills are being tested. The purpose of this study is to compare existing differences in student achievement by viewing existing data and to gauge faculty perspectives on why some students fare better than others on the CAHSEE. Appended are: (1) Letter of Informed Consent; (2) Survey Questionnaire; (3) Survey Results; (4) CAHSEE English Language Arts Scores CUSD/ABCUSD; (5) CAHSEE Math Scores CUSD/ABCUSD; (6) CAHSEE Scores 10th-Grade ELA; (7) CAHSEE Scores 10th-Grade Math; (8) CAHSEE Scores El ELA; (9) CAHSEE Scores El Math; (10) API Scores ABCUSD and API Scores CUSD; (11) Consent Letter to Administrator ABCUSD; (12) Consent Letter to Administrator CUSD; (13) Response from Administrator CUSD; and (14) Response from Administrator ABCUSD. (Contains 1 table and 24 figures.)