College & Workforce Readiness

Pennsylvania Exit Exams Approved

By Catherine Gewertz — August 14, 2009 1 min read
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The Kerfuffle in the Keystone State seems to be over. The Pennsylvania board of education approved the much-disputed exit exams yesterday.

The bickering about graduation tests in Pennsylvania has been going on for a while. In 2008, the state board approved a set of changes intended to close graduation loopholes and better gauge what students know. A big piece of that new approach was a set of end-of-course tests that would replace the state’s high school-level test.

The piling-on began. Many groups saw the proposal as a threat to the “local option” by which students could graduate with a locally designed test. Lawmakers got royally ticked off when the education department went ahead with test development despite a legislative moratorium.

Finally a compromise emerged, and that is what the state board voted on yesterday. The newly approved regulations still are subject to a couple of layers of review, but snags appear unlikely.

A version of this news article first appeared in the High School Connections blog.