Students will be able to supplement AIMS with grades

Phoenix - It's official: Current high school seniors will be able to use their good grades to supplement their failing AIMS scores to get a diploma.
 
But not just yet.
 
On a 35-21 margin the House gave final approval Wednesday to reinstating a now-expired two-year-old state law that allows seniors to boost their AIMS test results by up to 25 percent. And Gov. Janet Napolitano, while expressing concern about the use of the test as a graduation requirement, said enough students are affected to convince her to sign it.
 
But the measure needed 40 votes to actually take effect immediately on the governor's signature. And that means the authorization to schools to give affected students their diplomas won't become law until September.
 
Several legislators who voted against the measure acknowledged that all their opposition does is delay the official graduation of up to 6,000 seniors who need the bonus points. But they said they could not go along with the whole concept of giving diplomas to students who have not shown they have mastered the skills expected of high school graduates.
 
"At a time when we are being told daily in the press and from the colleges that we are not adequately educating our youth, to pass a bill like this that waters down, dumbs down the standards that we have created for our students here in Arizona is absolutely going the wrong way,'' complained Rep. Sam Crump, R-Anthem.
 
AIMS, more formally known as Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards, has been given to high schoolers for more than a decade. But passing it to get a diploma has been a requirement only since the Class of 2006.
 
Lawmakers did agree that year to let students boost their failing AIMS scores by up to 25 percent with good grades in required courses. But that was supposed to be just an interim measure and the law expired at the end of 2007.
 
This measure extends the law indefinitely, though only current seniors and juniors could get a 25 percent boost. That is reduced to 15 percent for the Class of 2010 and just 5 percent in future years.
 
Rep. Jack Brown, D-St. Johns, said he understands the desire to tighten graduation standards. But he told colleagues there are real people involved here, recounting a call he got recently from the parent of a Winslow High School senior.
 
"The mother says the daughter already rented her cap and gown and tried it on to see if it fit all right,'' he said. "Then the school told her that she could not march, she could not graduate with the kids,'' Brown continued. "I think that somehow or other we're losing sight of the individuals.''
 
And Rep. David Lujan, D-Phoenix, said there are reasons that otherwise good students can't pass AIMS, whether because of test anxiety or because whether some from non-English speaking households never were properly taught the language.
 
But Rep. Rick Murphy, R-Glendale, pointed out that AIMS is designed to ensure that students have at least a 10th grade level of proficiency in reading, writing and math.
 
"If 12th-graders who have high grade-point averages can't pass a 10th-grade test, then it's probably a good thing that they don't get a diploma that is meaningless and that their employers will find to be meaningless and that the community colleges will find to be meaningless."
 
He said those denied graduation because they failed AIMS will have to understand that being an adult is "full of challenges.''
 
"If we teach them now that high pressure is an excuse to underachieve, then we are setting them up for failure in many other areas of life besides just their education,'' Murphy said. "And this is a huge disservice to our young people.''
 
The delay some students will have in actually getting a diploma should not affect their ability to start college in the fall.
 
Virgil Renzulli, a spokesman for Arizona State University, pointed out that most schools accept students for admission in March, long before they have even completed their senior courses, conditional on the teens actually graduating. He said students without that document in hand will be able to enroll in classes when the fall semester starts in August, especially now that this new law makes it clear they will get diplomas at some point.
 
"We're always flexible,'' he said.
 
Wednesday's debate over bonus points also raised the entire question of whether there should be a single "high stakes'' test that Arizona students must pass to graduate and, if so, what that test should be.