Replacement sought for graduation test

May 31, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

Educators studying a replacement for Ohio’s Graduation Test say the new method must determine whether high school students are prepared for college or the workplace, not whether they simply know 10th-grade material.

As part of the state budget passed last summer, the Ohio Education Department was directed to find a new exam to replace the five-part Ohio Graduation Test.

By next summer, the department must convene a group to recommend which exams to choose and how they should be scored.

“There’s a lot of experimenting going on right now,” said Stan Heffner, an associate superintendent in the Ohio Department of Education. “We’ve got a lot of work to do explaining what this new assessment system might look like.”

The graduation test doesn’t effectively measure high-level reasoning and critical-thinking skills, said Mark Real, president and CEO of the Columbus-based education nonprofit KidsOhio.org.

Whatever replaces it should test fewer, but more-relevant, topics, he said.

The ACT college- entrance exam is being closely evaluated around the state, though no decision has been made to use it as the replacement for the graduation test.

The largest study — a $5 million pilot in 44 schools being conducted by the nonprofit Battelle for Kids — is looking at end-of-course exams that were developed by ACT.

Students involved in the pilot are taking tests in algebra I and II, English, geometry, pre-calculus, biology and chemistry. The tests are tied to value-added measures, which show whether students learned an appropriate amount of material.