Arizona announced on Nov. 3 that the new end-of-the-year assessment would be the AzMERIT, Arizona’s Measurement of Educational Readiness to Inform Teaching.
The announcement came about six months after announcing that Arizona would not be administering the PARCC exam in place of the AIMS,
The Arizona State Board of Education approved the adoption of the AzMERIT to replace the reading, English, and math portion of the AIMS. Students will still be taking the science AIMS.
Some students will test pilot the test in the fall, with students in grades three through high school taking the test in the Spring.
The testing window will be between March 30 and May 8. Some tests will be computer-based and some will be paper-based.
The AzMERIT exam marks the end of the requirement for students to pass the state test in order to graduate. Students in the 2015 and 2016 graduating classes still have to pass AIMS to graduate, but this year’s sophomores will no longer be held to that standard.