PHOENIX — State schools chief Tom Horne wants to go back to the day when students needed to pass a test to get a high school diploma.
In his annual State of Education address Tuesday, Horne said there are schools that are graduating up to 90% of their students yet with just 2% or 3% of students being proficient in key subjects.
“These schools are issuing fraudulent diplomas,’’ Horne told the House Education Committee.
He said employers are noticing. “CEOs are telling me they have applicants come with high school diplomas without the skills they expect from a high school graduate,’’ Horne said in his prepared text.
The concept is not new. Arizona used to have a test called Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standards, or AIMS, enacted in 2006.
Students needed to pass all sections of the test to get a diploma. Often, they would have to take it multiple times to graduate.
Lawmakers repealed the requirement to pass a test to graduate in 2015. While there are still tests administered in junior and senior years to determine what a student has learned, they are no longer the “high-stakes’’ exams where failure means no diploma.
Tom Horne, Arizona schools superintendent.
Diane Douglas, who was state schools chief at the time, praised the elimination 10 years ago. “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,’’ she said then.
“High academic standards and tests that provide information and accountability are very important,’’ said Douglas who, like Horne, is a Republican. “But placing all the responsibility and stress on individual students for the success of our educational system is unfair.’’
Horne, in an interview with Capitol Media Services, disagreed.
“We need a high-stakes test ... to be sure that the diploma means something, so that employers know if you have a high school diploma it means you’ve learned something,’’ he said. “And we need it so that schools don’t graduate kids that don’t know anything.’’
That’s also the assessment of state Sen. John Kavanagh, a Fountain Hills Republican.
He acknowledged that there was pressure from parents to eliminate the requirement. They did not want their children, who may otherwise have done all the assigned coursework and passed the regular exams, to then find out they couldn’t graduate with their classmates.
But Kavanagh said there needs to be something more — something that specifically tests students on what the state Board of Education says they should know.
“If kids don’t study and they don’t have the knowledge, they shouldn’t graduate,’’ Kavanagh said.
He has already introduced SB 1028, which would require the state education board to establish a method and a standard to determine the minimum performance level on a statewide exam required to graduate.
Under his legislation, students would have at least two opportunities in both 11th and 12th grades to pass. Schools could start providing instruction and materials for 9th and 10th graders in what they will need to know.
His bill, set to be heard Wednesday by the Senate Education Committee, has exceptions for students who get a passing score on a technical skills assessment test for a career and technical education program, or if they get an industry certification.
Students who have an “individual education plan’’ because of an identified disability would also be exempt from having to pass the test.
What Horne wants — and Kavanagh is proposing — will need approval from the Republican-controlled Legislature as well as the signature of Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.
That could depend on whether parents are willing to accept the possibility their children could go through high school and still not get a diploma at the end.
“I had that (lobbying) for eight years,’’ said Horne, who was state schools chief from 2003 through 2011 before again being elected to the post in 2022. He said he heard from parents as well as legislators who were hearing from their constituents.
“And I’d say, ‘You just tell them that their little darlings can pass the test if they’ll study,’ ‘’ Horne said. “And I never heard of a single person who actually didn’t graduate because of the AIMS test. It made them study.’’
The test requirement would apply only to traditional public and charter schools. Horne said the state has no purview over private schools or homeschoolers.
But Horne said employers will notice which private schools are not properly preparing their graduates with the skills they need and “will take it into account’’ when hiring.
Horne, in his speech to state lawmakers, trotted out several other priorities.
One is closely related to the high-stakes graduation exam: Putting some additional teeth in the “move on when reading’’ program. It requires that students be reading at least at a third-grade level to go on to fourth grade.
Horne said he got the state Board of Education to close a loophole that allowed school superintendents to create an exemption when students were making progress. But he still wants a change, he said, in what is considered reading at a third-grade level.
“Our standard is pretty low,’’ Horne said.
The schools chief said he has become a supporter of a program call Khanmigo, an artificial intelligence tutor and teaching assistant. In essence, it not only helps teachers prepare lesson plans but also tracks, on a student-by-student basis, whether they have understood what they’re being taught.
It works in a way so the individual student has to find the answers, Horne said.
He said he hopes it will mean all students absorb all the lessons.
“Right now, you’ve got some kids that get 90% on the test, some kids get 70%,’’ Horne said. “The 70%-ers still go to the next grade, not knowing 30% of what they need to keep learning. And they can get lost.’’
