Ohio lawmakers pushing to make 11th grade ACT, SAT tests optional

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Tucked into the state’s two-year budget bill passed last week by the Ohio House is a provision that allows 11th-grade students and their parents to decide whether to take college entrance exams, which for years have been mandatory in public schools.

 House Bill 110, which is now being considered in the Senate, would let parents or guardians choose to opt out of the SAT or ACT test. This would apply to students beginning the next school year.

Rep. Jon Cross, a Hardin County Republican, pushed for the provision to be added to the budget bill. Earlier this year, he introduced a bill with a similar change.

 The tests cost the state $2 million a year to administer to all high school juniors, Cross said.

But not all students are planning to go to college. Many go directly into the workforce, the military or career technical programs, making the tests unnecessary. And colleges are increasingly dropping the ACT and SAT requirement, Cross said – from Texas Christian University to the University of California at Berkeley.

“Not all juniors want to take the ACT test,” he said. “You have a lot of juniors who will go in, in the first 10 minutes fill out all the circles and be done.”

The tests are a graduation requirement, and the Ohio Department of Education uses them as the college and career readiness assessment for school report cards.

 Students who don’t take the ACT or SAT would nevertheless be allowed to graduate under the budget provision. Cross, who is no fan of the school report cards, said that the students who choose to take them would be more serious about it, and the overall college and career readiness scores would be higher.

 As the former CEO of the Hardin County Chamber and Business Alliance, he said that low scores can hurt a community’s ability to attract new and expanding businesses. The state needs to have a discussion about the best way to assess whether high school graduates are ready for the workforce or higher education.

To school district officials, the provision in the budget will provide more flexibility without completely ending the tests, said Will Schwartz, the Ohio School Boards Association’s deputy director of legislative services.

“It still provides an opportunity for students to take the SAT or ACT at no cost to them and their parents,” he said.

Offering tests to students free of charge is important, said Scott DiMauro, Ohio Education Association president.

“It’s been a way to remove a barrier from going into higher education,” he said, though the group supports it being voluntary.

There was no organized opposition to the provision in the House.

There is no guarantee that the Senate will keep the provision that was passed in HB 110. Sometimes the legislative chambers’ budget proposals are wildly different.