AIMS Test Follies

One of these days, the GOP dominated Arizona Legislature is going to come to the realization, if nothing else at the ballot box, at what a pathetic joke the AIMS test is.

When it's all over, when the last AIMS test is handed in next spring, here's what Arizona officials now say is likely: About 4,500 seniors who have passed their high school courses will flunk the test and not get a diploma.

Another 16,000 seniors will drop out, most before taking their last shot at Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards. Teachers worry some could bail just to avoid the embarrassment of failing the exam again.

The Class of 2006 is the first that must pass all AIMS sections - reading, writing, and math - to get a diploma.

The prospect of several thousand seniors being kept from graduating is accelerating efforts to rescue them from the brink. Among the efforts:

OK. Here's a hint. Now I'm not a highly placed Republican legislator (or a Democratic one for that matter) or a school administrator, but if you have to spend time, effort, and money each year looking for ways to graduate kids who've been prevented from graduating merely by failing the exam, then maybe, just maybe, ok, I'm going out on a limb here, maybe the exam is fatally flawed.

But here's the real kicker in the last paragraph:

About 24,000 seniors took the latest round of AIMS tests last week and will learn their scores in December. Those who still haven't passed will get their fifth and final crack in the spring. If last year's results are any indication, the majority of seniors who fail will be low-income, Hispanic, and live in rural areas.

Arizona's funding system for public education is so fatally flawed that it has faced several lawsuits and Federal Court orders in the past (the last of which the state is still reeling from). The GOP has cut education budgets with glee for most of the last quarter century, and would have cut them drastically 2-3 years ago if it wasn't for the intervention of Janet Napolitano.

Not to draw any conclusions, but frankly, a standardized test is little short of academic masturbation if not followed up with proper funding of rural and inner city schools.

Or maybe it's part of the GOP's grand design to make the poor less educated and less able to fend for themselves. Naw, couldn't be.