Is 2025 the Year to Eliminate Florida’s High School Exit Exams?
Public Education advocates in Florida are used to mobilizing to defeat harmful legislation only to see the same bad bills return the next session (I’m thinking Parent Trigger, School Board Term Limits, Universal ESAs…). Public Education advocates are NOT used to seeing their favorite proposals, especially those defeated by powerful political forces, refiled. This session may hold some surprises.
Last week Tampa Bay Times Education reporter, Jeff Solocheck, wrote “States are walking away from high school exit tests. Is Florida next?”
Good question.
Solochek noted there is “anticipation” that Senator Corey Simon’s 2024 proposal to eliminate Florida’s graduation test requirements may be re-introduced in the 2025 session. Senator Kathleen Passidomo, who prioritied “de-regulation” during her final year as senate president, has indicated support for revisiting the initiative this session.
According to Solochek, one of those “anticipating” the reintroduction of Simon’s proposal is Patricia Levesque, executive director of the Foundation for Florida’s Future (known in Florida education circles as simply “the Foundation”), created by former Gov. Jeb Bush to support his education accountability program. Last session, the Foundation was instrumental in defeating the elimination of exit exams. I “anticipate” the Foundation will be equally aggressively this session. Public education advocates will have a fight on their hands and must be prepared to support Simon in his efforts to eliminate test scores from graduation requirements.
Once a popular policy, Florida is now among just six states (Florida, Ohio, Louisiana, New Jersey, Texas and Virginia) that still require students to pass exit exams in order to graduate public high school. In 2024, Massachusetts voters ended their state’s graduation test mandate, and New York officials announced plans to phase out their Regents exam requirement by 2027.
Research says exit exams have failed
The original idea of exit exams began in the 1970s as tests of basic eighth-grade-level skills. With the growth of standards-based reform and No Child Left Behind, more rigorous exit exams became popular. Under Jeb Bush, Florida adopted academic content standards with tests aligned to those standards, and used the test scores to hold schools, teachers, and students accountable for performance.
[It is important to remember that, from its inception, Jeb’s A+ Plan included testing all students, grading schools based on test scores AND offering vouchers for students to “escape failing schools.” Encouraging students to leave public schools for private options was always a central goal of Jeb’s Accountability system and this, more than anything else, may be why current lawmakers have been unwilling to touch it.]
The original argument for exit exams was that they would push students to work harder, and ensure their diploma was not devalued in the job market. This never happened. There is a general consensus in the research that high school exit exams result in higher dropout rates, with little or no evidence that they improve achievement or raise wages of high school graduates.
High school exit exams have been shown to disproportionally harm English Language Learners and Students With Disabilities and can drive students to drop-out rather than persevere. Students who have passed their coursework but struggle with testing, spend much of their last two years of high school chasing test scores for graduation.
Studies have found that graduation tests increase dropout rates, particularly among low-income students of color. Meanwhile, studies have generally shown that exit exams have not increased achievement or adult income for graduates. A 2013 study demonstrated that exit exams led to higher rates of incarceration. Reviews of the evidence (here and here) demonstrate few benefits to the policy but significant harms, especially for certain at-risk students.
It is well past time for Florida to repeal this harmful policy.
Last session, Senator Simon proposed SB7004 which (among other things) would have removed the state’s graduation test requirements (passing a 10th-grade Language Arts assessment and an Algebra I end-of-course exam) as part of the “de-regulation” process, promised by 2023’s HB1 and prioritized by then Senate President Passidomo. The bill had strong support from stakeholders, particularly district superintendents who provided compelling testimony regarding students harmed by the mandate. Then House Speaker, Paul Renner, promised he would rather light himself on fire than touch Jeb’s Accountability system. Ultimately, the proposal failed to make it to the final bill.
Simon’s SB7004 put Jeb’s Foundation in the unusual position of playing defense, launching what they called “a very public advocacy strategy to defeat the proposals.”
Bush published an op-ed in the South Florida Sun Sentinel, accusing Florida’s lawmakers of becoming “weak-kneed” on his education policies and arguing that removal of the exit exam requirement might improve Florida’s graduation rates, but it would reduce the diploma to “nothing more than a participation certificate.” (I wrote a response to Jeb’s op-ed here).
[For the record, eliminating the test score requirements would NOT reduce academic standards as students would still be required to take the state assessments,with their scores calculated as 30% of their final course grade, and pass all the required classes for graduation. (Of note, private high schools have NO state mandated graduation requirements, test-based or otherwise.) You can see Florida’s current public school graduation requirements here.]
The Foundation proceeded to lobby/”educate” members on what they called the “harmful impacts” of eliminating exit exams and celebrated their defeat as an “important win” for students. In their annual report on the “Education Highlights and Successes from the Florida Legislative Session,” they explained that “Florida’s Accountability Edge: Protecting the Policies Behind Consistent Statewide Success” became their top priority in 2024. It will, no doubt, be their top priority again in 2025.
The Foundation may have been surprised by the Senate’s strong effort to eliminate high school exit exams last session, but they will be prepared this session. Ms. Levesque told the Tampa Bay Times that “other options could better serve students.” She pointed to Indiana’s model as one that provides different pathways toward graduation that meet student needs “without getting rid of the high expectations.”
For the record, Indiana is one of the 44 states that DOES NOT require exit exams. In fact, when placed side by side, Indiana’s requirements for a standard diploma look remakably similar to Florida’s Standard Diploma Requirements (minus Florida’s testing requirements):
The interesting thing Indiana is enacting is allowing multiple pathways to a high school diploma in addition to the standard diploma, allowing students the option of individualizing their graduation requirements to align to their postsecondary goal of “Enrollment, Employment, or Enlistment” in the military. It seems complicated (you can learn more here), but none of these pathways including passing scores on state assessments.
So, even Levesque suggests you don’t really need test scores to “meet student needs ‘without getting rid of the high expectations.'”
Money Should Follow the Child But “Accountability” Need Not
A main goal for Jeb’s Accountability system was always to advance school vouchers. Now, Florida has universal vouchers, available to any students regardless of zipcode or family income and Jeb and his minions continue to fight against repealing any of the “accountability” measures, despite the evidence they are doing real harm to Florida’s public school students. To do so, Jeb argued, would reduce their diploma to “nothing more than a participation certificate.”
Following the passage of HB1 in 2023, Bush celebrated what he called the restoration of “the original intent of publicly funding education – by funding individual students.” (Are there any Education Historians out there who can verify that the original intent of publicly funding education was funding individual students?)
In today’s version of Jeb’s A+ plan, tax dollars follow students to private school but accountability does not. High stakes standardized testing has disrupted the public school classroom, resulting in scripted curriculum that teaches to the test, and the resultant scores are used to label the schools, teachers and students as failures. Publicly funded vouchers allow escape to test-free, accountability free oases – publicly funded but with no public oversight. Neither private schools nor their teachers are ranked based on test schools. Teacher certifcation and high academic standards are not required. There are no state mandates for graduation standards and students certainly don’t need to pass state assessments to be promoted or graduate. Families are expected to hold these schools accountable “with their feet,” but there is no requirement that private schools accepting vouchers be accredited or that such schools notify families of their lack of accreditation. Without these requirements, students graduating from unaccredited private high schools (and there are many) actually find themselves holding diplomas worth “nothing more than a participation certificate.”
The state’s unwillingness to apply basic accountability measures to its voucher programs, while clinging to measures shown to do real harm to its public school students, demonstrates the current purpose of the accountability system, and it is not to serve the best interest of students or provide the highest quality of education possible. The current Accountability system is not focused on ensuring public school improvement but, rather, is working to hasten their demise.
In the free-market vision of Education Freedom, parents are the ultimate arbiter of performance. Universal Vouchers were enacted with the idea that parents could hold charter schools and private schools accountable with their voices and their feet. If one really believed in Education Freedom and the “the magic of markets,” the same accountability could (and should) be applied to local public schools.
At the very least, Florida should consider eliminating exit exams.