School directors keep Keystone requirement

Unionville-Chadds Ford school directors voted to keep the Keystone Exams as a graduation requirement.

EAST MARLBOROUGH » Unionville-Chadds Ford school directors voted this week to keep the Keystone Exams as a high school graduation requirement.

The Keystones are used to meet the accountability requirements tied to the federal Every Student Succeeds Act to evaluate students’ mastery of those subjects as well as teacher and school performance. The three Keystone tests are Algebra, English and Biology.

The vote was 8-1, with Gregg Lindner, school director, dissenting.

John Nolen said that if administrators agree to give the test, it should be meaningful to students.

“From my perspective, I never wanted to take a test that didn’t mean a lot to me,” Nolen said.

Nolen said that if a student does not pass a test, they are given remedial studies and other “pathways.”

“We expect our students to continue to score quite well on Keystones,” Nolen said. “For those who do struggle, there are remediation courses, tutoring, and second and third tries if needed to be able to meet it. If not, there are other pathways.”

School Director Victor Dupuis agreed.

“If we are going to make the kids take the test because the state requires it, it’s silly for it not to mean something to them,” he said. “There are a lot of resources dedicated to the administration of the test.”

Nolen said no student to date has been unable to graduate because of the state-mandated Keystone requirement.

The Keystone Exam requirement has been quite controversial. Last year, state Sen. Andy Dinniman, D-19, sponsored legislation that would have killed the Keystone Exams, and replaced it with the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), that 70 percent of Pennsylvania students already take for college admission purposes.

The state moratorium on the graduation requirement runs through 2019.

As state law stands, Pennsylvania is scheduled to begin requiring students in two years to pass standardized Keystone examinations in order to graduate high school.

A new law that went into effect last year permits students in career and technical education programs can graduate without taking the Keystone exam, provided they meet other academic requirements.

If students enrolled in career and technical education do not do well enough on the Keystone examinations in Algebra 1, literature and biology, they will be permitted to graduate anyway if they meet school district requirements in those subjects.