Many Now Are Eligible for Diplomas

Two weeks ago Georgia Governor Nathan Deal signed House Bill 91 into law thereby retroactively eliminating tests no longer required for high school students to graduate, including the Georgia High School Graduation Tests, Georgia High School Writing Test or their predecessors dating back as far as 1967.

The administration of the high school graduation test was eliminated in 2011 and only applied to then test takers but the current House bill eliminates the pre-2011 testing results.

When the recent bill was voted into law, Rep. Brooks Coleman of Duluth said that the bill could affect more than 8,000 people.

The bill would also allow former students who failed the graduation tests to petition for a diploma from the local school board where they were last enrolled, instead of going through a drawn-out waiver process through the state education board.

Essentially students who did not receive a high school diploma due to failure of passing either of those tests can now petition their local Board of Education for a diploma. This includes any special education student who received a special education diploma or a certificate of completion only because he or she had not passed one or more sections of the graduation test.

Any individual who earned a GED certificate solely for not passing the graduation tests may also petition for a regular education diploma.

The petition must be submitted with the system in which he or she was last enrolled to determine his or her eligibility to receive a high school diploma. There is no deadline for petitioning the local board of education for a diploma.

The petition form is available online at the Jasper County High School website, at the local Board of Education office, and on campus in the main office. Petitions can be submitted by fax or by mail to the JCHS Counseling Office.