"Research shows that students learn better when they have more time," Willow Glen High School Principal Elaine Farace said.

For the past few years, the high school has been using its district-provided desegregation funds to keep the campus open an extra period for students who want to get ahead or catch up, Farace said. The extra classes are for English, math, social studies, science and skill-building studies. Courses can last a semester or the entire year.

Since the state inaugurated the California State High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) in March 2001, some students wanting to ensure a timely graduation have found time more precious.

Farace said the extra classes are for intensive instruction or to assist students who didn't pass summer school.

"It builds their skills, goes toward graduation credit, and helps them pass the high school exit exam. For the class of 2004, 50 percent of students passed as sophomores."

Former Willow Glen High School principal Patrick Day, who in 2002 became the director of special projects for the San Jose Unified School District, helped inaugurate programs at the school to help students get up to speed and graduate with their class.

"When we started, most students weren't seniors but were still behind in units required for graduation," Day said.

Day said the school initiated a program similar to one in the San Francisco Unified School District, which raised its graduation requirements. The rigorous San Francisco program was tough and "too many students were not graduating" in that district, Day said. "The San Francisco district dropped the requirements, but we didn't, and we didn't have a big decline in graduating seniors."

Day said it was more than the extra classes that made the graduating classes a success story.

"We tried to emphasize college and made sure students were applying for entrance applications," Day said.

Ron Genese, who has been a teacher with the San Jose Unified School District since 1973, teaches an intense math course in the high school cafeteria for five students. He originally had 14 students in the class, but several dropped out at the beginning of the year when they learned they had passed the exit exam, he said.

"What's surprising is that the remaining five are all in college prep classes but haven't taken or passed the exit exam," Genese said.

In a statement issued in March 2001, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin and State Board of Education President Reed Hastings said the exit exam "will be a positive challenge for high school students, but they will have multiple examination opportunities between the ninth and twelfth grades."

Even Eastin and Reed acknowledge that not all students pass the exit exam the first time they take it.

"Other states that have similar programs have found that in the early years of testing a large number of students did not pass on their first attempt. In the short term, the plan is to guarantee that those students who did not pass the test get the remedial assistance necessary in order to be successful on this exam," they said in their statement.

Eleventh-grader Linda Herrera doesn't think the exit exam is a positive experience.

"I think it's unfair," Herrera said. "In these classes they don't prepare us for taking the exam."

Her classmate Dilsa Villa, also an eleventh-grader, said the extra seventh period is still helpful. "I'm learning to strengthen my learning skills," she said.