COLUMBUS, Ohio — Students looking to graduate in 2021 may have a problem on their hands if the Ohio General Assembly doesn’t come up with a solution soon.

Making a decision on Senate Bill 358 is critical before the current general assembly ends. If legislators don’t pass the bill, students will be left wondering what they need to do to graduate and if they’ll be able to graduate.

Like last school year, graduation may look a whole lot different; but to get to the graduation line, the Ohio General Assembly will have to make some crucial decisions quickly on Senate Bill 358. The bill calls for students to be able to skip end of course exams and still graduate on time if they’ve been participating in class virtually, doing the course work and getting passing grades in their core classes.

Melissa Cropper, President of the Ohio Federation of Teachers, said educators are trying to avoid another round of challenges like last year.

“So if they weren't able to take the end of course exams for various reasons, whether we were on remote learning, or just wasn't practical given the situation, then they could use their coursework,” she said.

With the pandemic still in play and districts flip flopping between remote, hybrid, and full in-person learning, she thinks there are useful ways to spend time with students.

“We just don’t think that testing this year is a really useful and productive way to spend time with students,” she said. “In addition to the fact that we're not sure that you can get any kind of reliable data under the circumstances in which we'd be testing.”

Cropper said the fear is that districts could end up with unreliable data, which is worse than having no data at all, if students are forced to test; but some who testified earlier this year on SB 358 have a different thought.

"Nationally, experts have suggested that students especially those already facing the biggest hurdles may have fallen far behind and lost anywhere from 7 to 12 months of learning,” said Chad Aldis of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. “To determine whether this is true in Ohio and to identify what students learned during these tumultuous months, spring state assessments should be administered."

Still, some courses for students end in December and the bill has yet to come up for a vote.

“For them to get an answer or sooner rather than later is really critical,” Cropper said. “Are we going to try to bring in students to do these end-of-course exams and situations where things might not necessarily be safe, or are we going to allow them to just use their coursework, for that grade instead of the end of course exams.”

Cropper said time is ticking down for legislators to decide.

Sen. Teresa Fedor (D) and Sen. Nathan Manning (R) are the sponsors of the bill. Cropper said educators are also still waiting to see if the federal government will allow waivers this year for state mandated tests. If they’re allowed, they want the state superintendent to be able to apply for one of the waivers.