Tom Horne wants to bring back Arizona high school exit exam. This time, the ACT

As states across the country ditch high school exit exams, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne wants to bring back Arizona’s.

He’s working through the Legislature to do so.

Senate Bill 1466, sponsored by Ken Bennett, R-Prescott, would require students to achieve a minimum score on the statewide assessment — which is the ACT, a standardized test designed for college admissions — to graduate high school. Students could also achieve a passing score on a technical skills assessment test or obtain an industry certification, both of which are offered through career and technical education programs.

The bill exempts students who receive special education services.

Opponents say the bill could reduce graduation rates among some student populations and claim standardized tests aren’t good ways to measure students’ readiness to graduate.

The education department, led by Horne, would set the minimum ACT score required to graduate, according to the bill. The department would also have to create a schedule to give students at least four opportunities to take the test over the course of their junior and senior years.

Currently, to graduate high school, Arizona students must complete a minimum number of credits and pass a civics test based on the U.S. naturalization test.

Bennett said requiring students to achieve a minimum score on an assessment to graduate shows them that, as an adult, “the world is going to expect competency … in one way or another.”

The bill passed the Senate Education Committee and is headed to the Senate floor.

Bill would reverse 2015 decision to abandon state's high school exit test

At the Feb. 14 Senate Education Committee meeting, Arizona Department of Education Chief Operating Officer Arthur Harding said the bill’s goal is not to “deny graduation to anybody.”

It’s a response to schools with high graduation but low proficiency rates, which is “problematic when it becomes systemic,” he said. In 2023, the state’s four-year graduation rate was 77.5%.

The requirements would incentivize students to “prepare to be college- or career-ready after high school,” Harding said. That’s a way to combat “the crisis of low academic achievement and the difficulty in finding workers,” he said.

The bill’s passage would mark a return to a statewide assessment graduation requirement in place during Horne’s first run as the state’s superintendent of public instruction from 2003-2011.

Former Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed a bill into law that removed the requirement in 2015. At the time, the test was Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards, commonly called AIMS.

The 2015 bill’s sponsor, Republican Kelli Ward, said at the time that dropping the requirement could save schools money: “We’ve got students and teachers and schools and districts having to prepare for a test that has no meaning behind it,” Ward said, according to an Arizona Republic article. The superintendent of public instruction at the time, Diane Douglas, said placing “all the responsibility on individual students for the success of our educational system is unfair” and that she hoped the decision relieved stress for parents and students, according to the article.

The decision to remove the requirement was “a big mistake” that encouraged mediocrity, Horne said. He called the graduation requirement a “great motivator.”

“We set the cut score so it was high enough to get kids to study, but not so high that many kids would actually be denied graduation as long as they did study,” Horne said. “A lot of kids who failed the first time, they would study hard and then pass the second time.” Students had four chances to pass, he said.

Arizona implemented the ACT as its statewide high school assessment in 2022. The state administers the test to students during their junior year.

The State Board of Education considers scores of 19 out of 36 to be proficient in math and English language arts. That cut score was set in 2022 as a measure of school performance.

But Horne said the education department’s cutoff score for high school graduation would be lower than the State Board’s proficiency cutoff out of consideration for students who don’t plan to go to college — and therefore do not need college-level proficiency — but still want to graduate. Giving an exact score now would be premature, he said.

The average ACT score in Arizona for the graduating class of 2023 was 17.7, according to the ACT.

Horne: ACT doesn’t measure state standards but is better than no test

Horne’s proposal comes as higher education institutions across the country have dropped SAT and ACT requirements in recent years against the backdrop of a debate over whether the tests favor wealthy students who can afford private tutoring and multiple attempts.

It also comes as states nationwide have moved away from high school exit exams.

More than 80% of four-year colleges and universities across the U.S. won’t require applicants for fall 2025 to submit ACT or SAT scores, according to an analysis by FairTest, a national nonprofit.

And only nine states still require high school exit exams, down from a high of 27 in the mid-1990s, according to a FairTest tally. The organization advocates “against the misuse and overuse of standardized tests and for better forms of educational assessments,” according to Executive Director Harry Feder.

Arizona’s three largest public universities — Arizona State University, University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University — do not require SAT or ACT scores for admission.

Still, many states across the country, like Arizona, administer the SAT or ACT to high schoolers to fulfill federal testing requirements under the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act.

But no state uses either test as a graduation requirement, Feder said. Each of the nine states that still use exit exams have homegrown assessments that are intended to be aligned with their state’s standards, he said.

Horne said the ACT was not his first choice because the test does not measure how well students have learned state standards.

But developing a new graduation assessment would require appropriations from the Legislature, which Horne said was unlikely since the state is experiencing a financial deficit this year. The ACT is better than no test at all, he said.

Feder called that “preposterous.”

“If I’m a kid who fails, I am suing the state,” Feder said. “A high school diploma is a necessary ticket for economic well-being. And you’re saying that you’re going to give me a test that you’re not teaching me for in a public Arizona school? You can’t do that.”

Bill would create 'major obstacles' for some students, advocates say

The bill has drawn opposition from education advocates.

Requiring students to pass a test to graduate creates “major obstacles” for students with different learning styles and students who struggle with standardized testing, said Tyler Kowch, the communications director for the public education advocacy group Save Our Schools Arizona.

Feder sees the proposed ACT requirement as a potential barrier for English language learners, who make up nearly 10% of all Arizona’s public school students and just over 10% of students in Arizona high school districts, according to the most recent education department data.

California got rid of its high school exit exam in part because of its disproportionate impact on Latino students, Feder said. An independent evaluation commissioned in 2014 by California found that its exit exam was a significant barrier for students classified as English language learners and that passing rates for economically disadvantaged, Hispanic and Black students were significantly lower than passing rates for white and Asian students, according to a 2017 EdSource article.

Marisol Garcia, the president of the Arizona Education Association, a union representing educators across the state, said in a statement that standardized tests shouldn’t be how a student's academic growth or readiness to graduate is measured.

Instead, Garcia said, students should be “supported in building the skills they need to succeed in whatever they and their families decide are their next steps” after graduation.

Steve Watson, the Maricopa County School Superintendent, said teachers need to spend “more time teaching and less time testing.” He’d also like to see the decision on cut scores lie with the State Board of Education, where there’s more room for public input, he said.

Watson, a Republican, oversees the Maricopa County Regional School District. Its schools are classified as “accommodation schools.”

Some students in his district could “absolutely” choose the career and technical education route under SB 1466, Watson said. But some have been “failed by the system,” and some have taken “diverse paths” to get to the district, having dropped out, been suspended or spent time in juvenile detention. “They’re still developing that skill set to be able to take the ACT,” he said.

Feder said that no single instrument should have “those kinds of high-stakes consequences.” There are other options: lots of states, he said, have implemented multiple avenues for students to demonstrate proficiency, like project-based assessments or badges of competency in certain areas. And he called standardized tests an “outmoded measure” of whether students are ready for higher education and work.

Arizona School Administrators, a nonprofit that provides training for school leaders, criticized SB 1466 as unnecessary and misguided.

“You keep adding more and more statutes over the years, more and more burdens to schools, and there’s no evidence that any of these additional laws over the last 15-20 years have had a positive impact on education or kids,” said Paul Tighe, the organization’s executive director. His organization is against the concept of a graduation assessment altogether, he said, but the ACT is especially wrong for the job.

“It’s like trying to use a hammer when you need a screwdriver. It’s not the right tool. It’s not what it’s designed for," Tighe said.

Bennett, the bill’s sponsor, said he would be willing to include more pathways to graduation in the bill. He offered the example of allowing a student with test anxiety to graduate with a minimum GPA instead of a minimum ACT score. That’s a conversation he plans on having with Horne, he said.

Reach the reporters at mparrish@arizonarepublic.com and nicholas.sullivan@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Bill backed by Horne would bring back Arizona high school exit exam