More than 570 high school seniors in Tucson Unified School District may not graduate because they may not have passed AIMS, the state’s test to measure whether they have mastered reading, writing and math.

Last year, scores of seniors received their diplomas because their AIMS results were augmented by grades they received in their classes.

But this year, the state Legislature must extend augmentation if it is to affect students graduating later this month, said David Scott, TUSD’s director of accountability and research.

Such legislation has passed the state House but is stalled in the Senate, he said.

And it may not come up for a vote until after graduation May 22, Scott said.

Therein lies the dilemma.

Do schools allow seniors to participate in graduation ceremonies, not knowing whether they will earn the diploma?

The district’s governing board will discuss the issue at its regular meeting Tuesday.

Of TUSD’s approximately 3,200 high school seniors, about 82 percent – or 2,629 – have passed all three AIMS sections.

But 198 students, or about 6 percent of the graduating class, are waiting to hear if they passed the math section. Data on that may not be available for another week or two, Scott said.

“You hate to deny a kid the opportunity to walk and find out after the (graduation) ceremony that they have the legal right to a diploma,” he said.

There also are are 373 students, or about 12 percent of seniors, who know that if there is no augmentation this year, they will not get a diploma because they have not passed either the reading or writing portion of the AIMS tests.

“And it’s not just a matter of if you get to walk or not – which is a big deal to parents and other relatives – but when the legislation finally is voted on, it still will require people to process the information,” Scott said.

If the vote comes after the end of school, those people will be off for the summer, he said.

“In the past, we’ve had only one student complete graduation requirements and leave us without diploma because of not passing the AIMS test,” Scott added.

This year could be quite different.

In previous years, augmentation and Individual Education Plans, or IEPs, for special education students, he said, have allowed the rest to graduate.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Education, Local, Special. Tags for this post: Breaking News, Education-K-12, Education-K-12-Local, K-12, Mary Bustamante, page-a01, Special-Breaking News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.