10th-Graders Bypass Science Test: State Board Votes to Delay the Requirement Until the Class of 2012

Oct 12, 09:42 AM

Current Headlines: By Bill Roberts, The Idaho Statesman, Boise

Oct. 12--Idaho 10th-graders won't have to pass a science test this year to graduate.

Instead, the State Board of Education voted 7-0 Thursday to make the class of 2012 -- this year's eighth graders -- the first students responsible for also passing the statewide science exam before getting a diploma.

Now, students begin in 10th grade taking tests in language arts, reading and math, which they must pass before graduating.

"I think that is exactly the way it should be done," said Linda Clark, Meridian School District superintendent. "Students should know before they enter high school what the rules for graduation are."

The board backed away from one of its own rules that could have required this year's 10th-graders to pass the exam after school districts complained they didn't know it was coming.

Teachers and administrators said they would have had to scramble to get kids ready for the exam, which would cover not only 10th grade, but eighth and ninth grade science as well.

Subjects would include earth and physical science as well as biology and other related subjects. Teachers would have had to work review time into their classroom just days before school was about to start.

Tom Luna, state schools superintendent and an education board member, sought to change the date so teachers could become more familiar with the state's relatively new science standards. Students also needed to become more familiar with the testing, Luna had said.

Statewide science tests were given in fifth, seventh and 10th grades for the first time last spring in preparation of meeting federal requirements under No Child Left Behind this year.

But making the science test a graduation requirement was a state decision, not part of No Child guidelines.

Supporters for the change said graduation testing requirements should be laid out for students when they first enter ninth grade so they know the ground rules for receiving a diploma.

Shortly before the school year began, the State Board of Education told school districts that 10th graders would have to pass the science exam, along with other established Idaho Standards Achievement Tests in reading, math and language arts, as a graduation requirement starting in spring 2008.

Idaho launched graduation tests in 2004 as a way to measure student skills in reading, math and language arts. The graduation test is given in the 10th grade so that students who fail have opportunities to retake the exams several times before graduation day.

Science is Idaho 10th-graders' weakest subject based on the exams that comprise the graduation tests. Forty-two percent of the 18,769 10th-graders who took the pilot exam last spring failed it -- the highest failure rate of the four tests.

Bill Roberts: 377-6408

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