Amina Musa heard the news from a teacher she encountered in the hallway at school just before spring break: She had passed the California High School Exit Exam and would graduate with her class.

“She came into my classroom. She was jumping up and down,” said Diana LaMar, Musa’s instructor in English as a second language at Crawford High School.

While some students might take passing the exit exam for granted, it was a major accomplishment to Musa. When she came to the United States with her family at age 12, she didn’t speak English, could not read or write in her native language and had no math skills beyond counting to 10.

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