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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2013 - 2014
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | May 21, 2014 01:13 PM |
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| From: | Representative Dan Truitt |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Prohibiting the Mandating of Keystone Exams as a Graduation Requirement |
In response to overwhelming demand from concerned parents and educators in my district, and in response to input I have received from stakeholders across the state, I will soon introduce legislation to prohibit the Department of Education and the State Board of Education from promulgating regulations that establish Keystone Exams as a graduation requirement. This would, in effect, negate recently passed regulations that do require students to pass three Keystone Exams to graduate from high school. Let me be clear that I understand and support the goals that led to the passage of these regulations. Both sides of the preceding debate made compelling arguments. We need greater accountability for both educators and students. By making the exams graduation requirements, students would have “skin in the game” and a reason to take the exams, which were originally intended as tools for evaluating educators, more seriously. Furthermore, by requiring students to pass the exams, we would be demonstrating that their diplomas meant more than that they had simply spent at least 12 years in school. Passing the exams would demonstrate that the students had garnered the basic skills that they would need to succeed in the modern world. Educators expressed concern about the costs to remediate students and questioned whether they and the state had the resources to implement the alternate programs for students who, for whatever reason, might never be able to pass the exams. I did not find the concerns about costs too compelling because I believe that we don’t owe our children diplomas. We owe them educations. If they can’t pass the exams because they have not mastered the subjects, we should remediate them, regardless of the costs. However, after listening to stories about some students who could not pass the exams, but, were still able to move on to successful post-secondary paths, I found myself continuously returning to the same questions in my mind: Why do students fail the exams? Is it because the students don’t know the material? Is it because we are conducting the tests at the wrong time (too early in the school year or too late)? Is it because the students are not good at taking tests? Is it because the content of the tests does not match what we are teaching in class? Is it because the test questions are poorly written? I don’t know the answer to these questions and I’m not sure that anyone else does either. So, before we cause chaos for the class of 2017 (the first students who would be subjected to the requirements of the recently-passed regulations), I think we need to take a step back and collect more data to better understand the reasons why some students can’t pass Keystone Exams. To do this, we must first put a hold on the graduation requirements and I hope that you will join me in sponsoring this legislation (copy enclosed). |
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| View Attachment | ||
Introduced as HB2317