The Gadsden Times

Alabama’s high school graduation examination is being phased out — this fall’s juniors will, in the 2014-15 school year, be the last students required to take it — in favor of end-of-course tests.

The new tests are supposed to be more difficult than the current exam, according to state education officials, offering a better gauge of whether students are “college-and career-ready.”

We hope they perform as advertised, given the alarming statistic reported by the TimesDaily of Florence — more than a third of Alabama students who entered college as freshmen last fall had to take remedial courses.

Making the situation even more alarming is the fact that state high school students have been easily passing the graduation exam — the rates in 2010-11, according to the state Department of Education, were 98 percent for biology, 95 percent for mathematics, 94 percent for reading, 91 percent for language and 88 percent for social studies.

Those are the kind of numbers people usually celebrate in education, but for whatever reason, they certainly aren’t translating to post-secondary success at the level Alabamians should expect.

Education officials say part of the problem is Alabama’s colleges and universities have different standards. Acceptable work at one institution might put you in a remedial class at another.

There’s a push to develop a standardized method for determining which students need remedial work, or to quantify what each college wants so students will know what’s expected of them when they register for classes.

Either option would give Alabama’s high schools an idea of what graduating seniors should know when they receive their diplomas — a standard that’s needed.

Everyone isn’t college material, which is why we’ve been consistently supportive of career technology programs (although many of them contain academic requirements). Some still hate to see so much emphasis placed on testing (although we’ve yet to see a better alternative for measuring academic progress). All the burden can’t be placed on school systems, schools and teachers, because students can’t be properly educated unless they’re receptive to instruction.

We just think more than two-thirds of those coming out of a college preparatory track in high school should be able to do basic college work, without touch-ups.