In June, the state Senate overwhelmingly approved Senate Bill 1095, which allows students who do not score proficient on the Keystone Exams to demonstrate their readiness to graduate through alternative routes. This bill recognizes that standardized tests aren’t the only way to measure students’ abilities and provides options to measure students’ readiness for post-secondary education. 

Senate Bill 1095 creates multiple pathways for students to demonstrate graduation readiness beyond simply passing each Keystone Exam. Under this bill, students who do not score proficiently on all three Keystone Exams would be provided the opportunity to meet local grade-based requirements and utilize one of the following options as an alternative demonstration of graduation readiness:

• Option 1) achieve an established composite score based on performance on all three Keystone Exams;
• Option 2) achieve established equivalent scores on a variety of alternate assessments, achieve acceptance in a registered apprenticeship program after graduation, achieve admission to higher education, or achieve success in dual enrollment/postsecondary courses;
• Option 3) demonstrate competency through evidence specific to career and technical education (CTE) for students who are CTE concentrators (the bill simply clarifies this option which was passed into law just last year); or
• Option 4) present rigorous and compelling pieces of objective evidence relating to a student’s career, military, or post-secondary plans that reflect readiness for graduation which have been approved for use by the State Board of Education (the Board will also approve the amount of required evidence).

The bill further provides an additional year delay of the graduation requirement as a transition period to the new system, provides that a student with a disability who satisfactorily completes their individualized education program shall be granted a high school diploma, provides for the elimination of project-based assessments, places common-sense parameters on supplemental instruction relating to Keystone Exams and addresses various other related issues.

“This proposed legislation provides school districts with commonsense alternatives for assessing student performance”, said Dr. Paul Healey, executive director of the Pennsylvania Principals Association. “We are pleased to support this move away from an overemphasis on standardized testing.”

This bill is supported by PSBA, PSEA, PASA and the Pennsylvania Principals Association.

Be sure to contact your legislator in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and ask him/her to support SB 1095. (Click here to find your representative.)