For 10 years, AIMS has been one of the most vulgar four-letter words you could utter in an Arizona public school.
Students stressed about it, teachers fretted over it, politicians played with it and interest groups fought over it.
Conventional wisdom said that right about now — just weeks before graduation for the class of 2006, the first required to pass AIMS — thousands of local seniors would be facing the fact they'd be left without a diploma.
It turns out the consequences won't be nearly so dire.
Of the more than 6,000 potential graduates in greater Tucson, schools estimate only about 100 are in danger of not graduating because of AIMS. That's about one of every 60, or less than 2 percent.
And that's not counting students who may have passed the most recent round of tests — reading and writing exams were last month and math is next week.
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Some high schools, like Sabino, on the Northeast Side, and Desert View, on the South Side, don't have any students who still need to pass AIMS. Most, like Palo Verde, Pueblo, Santa Rita, Flowing Wells and Catalina Foothills, have one to three students in that position. And a couple of larger schools, such as Tucson High and Sahuaro, have about a dozen students who need to pass.
In fact, more students are at risk of not graduating due to a lack of credits than AIMS.
In the Tucson Unified School District, which has roughly 3,300 seniors, 82 still need to pass AIMS to graduate — compared with 133 who are flunking because of credits. There are 118 who need both.
State-level officials say the surprising AIMS figures hold true across Arizona.
That's a big switch from just two years ago, when 65 percent of Pima County sophomores — this year's seniors — failed the math portion of AIMS, 45 percent failed reading and 42 percent failed writing. Passing scores were significantly higher last fall and up again in grades released in December.
The dreadful situation some had feared was avoided partly because students such as Ironwood Ridge High School senior Kathleen Cochran took advantage of tutoring, educators say.
"For me, I'm not very good at math and had to really focus at getting better on that," said Cochran, 18, who's passed AIMS now and plans to attend Pima Community College in the fall.
But students also were saved by other factors.
The test's questions and passing threshold were changed, some say for the better. Lawmakers factored in grades from core classes, inflating the scores of students who have C's or better but struggled on AIMS.
Also, many students with physical, mental or learning disabilities — labeled "special education" students — are exempted if a team including a parent determines they can't pass. Students learning English as a second language also are not required to pass because of a court ruling in December that said the state hadn't properly funded those programs.
School officials are touting the work it took to increase the scores. But others, such as Bob Springer, who started an all-volunteer AIMS tutoring class at Ironwood Ridge, remain critical of what AIMS really means.
"They've made it so it's very, very hard to not graduate," Springer said. "We're not testing anything; we're spending a lot of money."
With so many changes to AIMS, it's hard to know how high-stakes it still is, says Jerry D'Agostino, a University of Arizona associate professor of education who specializes in achievement testing.
"At least a good deal of the improvement in the numbers is due to assessment practices and legislative action rather than improvement in high-school curriculum and expectations," he said.
Questions about state assessments are being raised from coast to coast. An analysis released early this month by The Education Trust, a nonprofit think tank that tracks state compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind law, found that students did drastically better on most state exams than they did on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — a nationally respected test.
In Arizona, 24 percent of students passed the national reading test, while 68 percent passed the state version. In math, 28 percent passed the national test, compared to a 74 percent passing rate on the state test.
One thing that may provide a window into whether AIMS has improved education in Arizona is a study D'Agostino is working on with local schools that will track this year's graduates for a year and identify if they do better in college or the work force than previous classes. Also unclear is what will happen to the apparently small number of students who meet all graduation requirements other than AIMS.
Educators don't deny the so-called AIMS augmentation aided students. But many — even those who were once critical of the exam — say it still has improved the quality of a high-school diploma.
"The curriculum is getting deeper," said Sahuaro High School principal Sam Giangardella. Whereas, "initially, we were just seeing if we could get the kids through AIMS," now the test is better aligned with what's being taught in the classroom, Giangardella said.
Cochran, the Ironwood Ridge senior, agrees.
"AIMS has really allowed me to focus more on problems I had that I could otherwise ignore in class and just kind of skate by," she said. But Cochran also has seen her high-school years transformed by the test in an era of standards and accountability. "I do agree that many teachers work by the book and just hand out worksheets. It could be improved in that way."
AIMS also is not off the table as a political issue. Legislators already have started talking about expanding the augmentation, which is set to expire after next year, to include electives.
At a debate in Tucson last week, Slade Mead and Jason Williams — the two Democratic candidates for superintendent of public instruction — continued to call for at least some changes to the test. Tom Horne, the Republican incumbent, defends the test — and the high passing rates.
"It is precisely what I predicted," he said. "I said if we stick to our guns and they know we mean it, they'll study."
Change is nothing new to AIMS. Neither is politics. It's been a decade since legislation was passed calling for the test, and the questions, requirements and grade scale all have evolved alongside public sentiment.
"People will talk about standards and accountability, but once their kids are subject to a test they might not pass, ideology is thrown out the window," D'Agostino said. "In some ways, it's shameful."
On StarNet Find AIMS scores and other results for schools statewide in the StarNet School Scorecard at azstarnet.com/ education
● The number of students in local districts who still need AIMS to graduate:
2
Catalina Foothills
1
Flowing Wells
2
Marana
5
Sunnyside
82
TUSD
* Numbers for Amphitheater Public Schools were not available
