Earlier today, Gov. Doug Ducey got rid of the requirement to pass the AIMS test in order to graduate high school, and this might have officially ended the beef for now between Ducey and Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas, because she was very happy about that decision.
“I congratulate the Legislature and Governor Ducey for removing this last vestige of high stakes testing,” she said in a statement. “I hope this decision relieves much of the stress that parents and their children face when a high stakes test determines whether or not a student can graduate from high school. High academic standards and tests that provide information and accountability are very important, but placing all the responsibility and stress on individual students for the success of our educational system is unfair.”
Either way, the state had replaced the AIMS with the AzMERIT (which Douglas isn’t a fan of), but students still had to pass the reading, math and writing portion of the AIMS to get a high school diploma through Dec. 31, 2016. Since Ducey signed the legislation into law, as of immediately that is no longer the case. But they do have to pass a civics test, which was also signed into law by Ducey last month.
“Testing will still be available next week for those students wishing to take AIMS for scholarship eligibility or other personal reasons. Parents or families with questions about testing availability in these situations should contact their student’s school,” the Arizona Department of Education said in a release.
Now, Douglas is proposing legislation to review all state academic standards. There is a bill in the state Senate, SB 1305, which would establish a committee of teachers, parents and other education stakeholders to annually evaluate targeted standards.
“As we move away from Common Core, it is important to do so in a deliberate fashion so that we stop the pattern of creating new standards only to abolish them every few years,” Douglas said in a statement. “This endless cycle leaves schools in a constant state of upheaval and causes undue stress for students and teachers.”
From ADE:
As part of the proposed review process, members of the committee would hold public meetings across the state. All public comment received at those meetings would be analyzed and used to generate proposed changes. Before submitting final recommendations to the State Board of Education, the committee would seek feedback at an additional series of public hearings.
“This process will ensure that the academic goals created for students are set by Arizonans, for Arizonans,” Douglas said. “I hope to partner with legislators, parents and educators to ensure as smooth a transition as possible so that teachers can get back to teaching and students can get back to learning.”
That bill made it through the Senate Education Committee on Feb. 12, and is now on hold until the entire Senate considers it.
This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2015.
Good-bye and good riddance to high-stakes tests, which never measured anything of value to begin with.
But what is going to take its place and how do we know that the jack-off legislators will actually make decisions that are going to give teachers more autonomy in the classroom. Teachers are professionals and many of are highly trained with Master’s degree and above. We need less authorizing and micro managing and more teacher decision-making in our schools.
Disrespectful comments like that surely don’t come from professionals.
This has nothing to do with what is good for students and everything to do with politics, money, and control. Arizona needs to prepare students for their futures with the ability to compete across ever smaller world and doing away with standards and competency in them is not going to achieve this. The current course our legislature and state officials are on is not going to create a state where educated and creative businesses want to locate–they tend to want an educated workforce and excellent schools for their children. The future here looks grim for everyone.
So, to recap… throw out a national set of consistent standards that aren’t constantly changing, and that are only getting “abolished” and replaced by people like Douglas…
And replace them with a constantly shifting, annual mess of revisions that will leave schools guessing and constantly being yanked around by political cranks with a pet peeve and free time to grouse at a committee.
We don’t do this to firemen, or police. We don’t take votes to tell universities what their courses should include.
Please give educators some professional respect and let them do their job.
This was a job they didn’t want to do. It required accountability.
I find this really strange. The AIMS was quit last year and the PARCC comes in this year. I don’t see there is a difference. PARCC is just another standardized test that measures Common Core standards. So maybe after they evaluate the standards as Douglas says, they will decide to not use the Common Core but as of now, everything is the same as when Brewer left. I don’t know much about the PARCC but it does test Common Core.
http://www.parcconline.org/student-looks-f…
I was a little off on the dates because the timeline is confusing. The originally date that the decision was made to replace the AIMS with the PARCC was in 2013. It was modified in 2014 and will be given instead of the AIMS this spring. The present administration did not change anything that I can tell.
The AIMS high school testing to graduate at the high school level is what has been eliminated starting now. State of the District(TUSD) will be given by Dr. H. T. Sanchez tonight at 6 at Tucson HIgh. It will also be streamed through their website.
This is absurd!if tests are gonna be eleminated like this why don’t they just hand out high school diplomas upon registering for Pre-K. Why are kids measuring below standards? Because of so many vacation days they are given and nothing to prepare them to study and strive for success. It is in very poor taste how parents actually think this is acceptable.