Math test moratorium advances

By Emily Richmond

Friday, May 16, 2003 | 9:55 a.m.

The Assembly Ways and Means Committee voted Thursday to put a two-year moratorium on requiring high school students to pass the mathematics proficiency exam as a condition for graduation.

Assembly Bill 179 also calls for an audit to determine whether the math exam appropriately reflects the curriculum of the state's 17 school districts, with a report due to the 2005 Legislature.

For thousands of high schoolers, the mathematics portion of the proficiency exam has been the biggest stumbling block toward earning a diploma. In some cases, students who earn A's in all their course work find themselves unable to pass the test.

"We are failing our students, and then asking them to pay for that failure," said Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas, sponsor of the bill.

In Clark County alone there are about 2,500 seniors who still have to pass the math portion of the exam. Next week is the last chance for them to do so and graduate with their class.

As of next fall, all Clark County students will be required to take algebra in order to graduate, said Edward Goldman, superintendent of the School District's southeast region. But that still leaves the geometry portion of the exam, Goldman said.

"Our kids who are on the college track, they'll take geometry automatically, but we need to be fair to all our students," Goldman said. "We put algebra and geometry questions on the exam but don't require them to take those classes. We can't have it both ways."

An earlier version of the bill called for scrapping the proficiency test entirely as a requirement for graduation. The amended version of the Assembly bill also calls for raising the required grade-point average for a Millennium Scholarship for students graduating in 2005 and 2006 from 3.0 to 3.1, and then raising it again to 3.25 for students graduating in 2007.