State Board of Ed Drops Graduation Project Requirement, Leaves it Up to Districts

The state Board of Education has made another change on the Keystone Exams.

The board gave final approval to the end-of-course high school assessments in mid-March, formally installing the Keystones as the replacement for the 11th-grade Pennsylvania System of School Assessment exams starting with the class of 2017.

While that was a formality – districts have been administering Keystones in a pilot phase for two years – the board also decided to remove the graduation project requirement. The state board wanted districts to focus on Keystones and not have to juggle the additional mandate of a graduation project, said Department of Education spokesman Tim Eller.

“Allowing that to be a local decision was more appropriate,” Eller said.

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Source: The York Dispatch, Andrew Shaw, April 1, 2013.