Doesn’t the Keystone Exam plan still create new unfunded mandates for school districts?
Much of the concern under the GCA proposal stemmed from the fact that districts would be required to provide much more remediation because they were required to administer the GCA tests, even if they weren’t using them as a graduation requirement. Under the Keystone proposal, there is no mandate to administer these tests, so districts will decide what kind of assessments and remediation they will provide. A January 2008 PSBA survey on local graduation requirements showed that 81% of responding school districts already require remediation for students who score below proficiency on the PSSA or local assessments. Therefore, most districts that choose to use a local assessment as their graduation requirement will have no additional remediation duties. One point to note, however, is that the Keystone Exam proposal, as did the GCA plan, specifically requires students to demonstrate proficiency in social studies in order to graduate. Therefore, the proposal effectively requires remediation t
