SIERRA VISTA — With the future of the AIMS test in the hands of a seven-member task force, local educators are thinking about what they would like to see done to improve or replace the state test.

“I think it’s always appropriate to look at programs that have been around for awhile,” said Lee Hager, superintendent of the Palominas school district. “Take a good look at it, and see if it’s doing the job that we want.

“If it’s good, it’ll survive. If it’s not good, they should replace it,” he said.

A last-minute addition to the state budget created the task force that will analyze the 12-year-old test that was implemented as a way to ensure students are being taught the skills they need to graduate.

To graduate, a student has to pass the high school version of the test, an aspect of AIMS — Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standards — that may be eliminated. Instead, state Rep. Rich Crandall, a Mesa Republican who got the provision added to the budget, said he believes it would be better to replace the graduation requirement with high-stakes promotion requirements for lower grades.

“The initial concept is a good one,” Hager said of Crandall’s proposal. “You don’t want to wait until the end.

“I think identifying student needs at a younger age is always better.”

However, Hager said he doesn’t believe it should involve holding kids back a grade level if they don’t pass.

“It’s really an individual decision,” he said. “To just say everybody should be contained should not be the way to go.”

Tombstone High School principal Robert Devere said he believes there’s a lot of merit to “catching the kids young.”

“We would need some sort of program, and of course funding, to catch them up on whatever their lower areas are,” Devere said, though he doesn’t believe the test has much of an impact on high school students graduat- ing.

“The stress came in where they removed the augmentation process this year, and then they all of a sudden reinstated it Tuesday of graduation week,” he said.

Devere said he would be in favor of the AIMS exam being changed or replaced so long as it’s done appropriately.

“I’m all for change in education if it comes for the sake of the kids,” he said.

There’s also the question of how it would affect school curriculums.

“The problem is AIMS is based off our standards, would we be changing our standards to again meet a new test?” Devere asked. “If we change our standards significantly, wouldn’t it be appropriate that we wait 12 years for testing? You don’t want to teach them one thing and test them on another.”

Tad Bloss, Buena High School’s principal, said he’s encouraged by the development of the task force.

“There shouldn’t be one type of assessment for every single type of learner,” Bloss said. “I feel like that is disheartening to kids.

“Whatever it is (the changes), I hope it would take into effect different learning styles.”

Bloss said he’d like the task force to take a look at how the test is done because at the moment he feels it’s hampering kids’ education.

“It’s an interruption to the education process, totally,” he said.  “I’d like to see them do a lot more just looking into the process and how that should be done.”

Bloss also said, under No Child Left Behind, he doesn’t believe AIMS is a fair test because there’s nothing to compare it to.

“The AIMS test itself is something that is not a quantified test,” he said. “There’s no history, it was just kind of created.”

“Right from out of the chute, it wasn’t a very good chute, because what does it mean?” he asked, saying it doesn’t offer results like national standardized test that will tell a student where they fall in their skill levels.

Bloss said, though, that he doesn’t feel there’s a need to change state standards, just the way the testing is conducted.

“I have no problems with standards, but I just feel like when we only use one way of assessing students for their competencies, that can be detrimental,” he said. “A student can be really demoralized by saying ‘I’m a failure, I can’t do this test,’ and that’s what it does right now.”

Hager said it needs to be taken into consideration that there are some areas of education you can’t test for.

“We lost some of the areas that students are shining in with their thinking processes,” he said. “There’s a lot to education, and it’s not always something you can test with a piece of paper and a machine.”

“We want our assessment to enhance our observations,” Hager added.

“It’s got to move away from ‘We’re going to catch you’ … assessment for the betterment of instruction is a good thing.”