Former high school students who couldn’t pass a state graduation test that used to be required will find it easier to obtain diplomas under a bill approved Wednesday by a House education committee.
House Bill 91 would retroactively eliminate any tests that are no longer required for students to graduate from high school, including the Georgia High School Graduation Test. Passing that multi-part test, established in 1994, was eliminated as a graduation requirement in 2011.
"We have heard from some students who had taken" parts of the graduation test "more than 15 or 20 times because they couldn't pass it," said Rep. Brooks Coleman, chairman of the House education committee, who is sponsoring the bill. "This will allow young people to go on with their lives that we've held up for the last ten or 12 years."
Coleman, R-Duluth, expects the bill to affect about 8,000 people.
Caleb Thomas, 19, would be one beneficiary of the bill. Thomas, who started high school in 2011, finished high school in Forsyth County last year with a 3.4 GPA, but couldn’t pass the math part of the graduation test, despite five attempts and coming within 15 points of passing. Two waiver applications to the state board of education were also denied.
“I would like to go to Lanier Technical (College) and get training to work in physical therapy, but I can’t do anything without a diploma,” he testified before the committee Wednesday. Thomas, who has a diagnosed math deficiency, now works at a Chick-fil-A restaurant.
The bill, which has the support of state school superintendent Richard Woods, would also allow former students who failed the tests to petition for a diploma from the local school board where they were last enrolled, instead of going through a drawn-out waiver process through the state education board. A provision amending HOPE scholarship eligibility for some students the legislation affects is likely to be added to the bill before the full House considers it.
“We no longer require the Georgia High School Graduation Test for our students, yet we are not allowing students from previous years to graduate because they have not passed the graduation test,” Woods said in a statement. “If we are not requiring it for our current students then we should not penalize students in the past who met all graduation requirements except for passing this one test.”
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