Graduation Tests Requirements

The following learning outcomes are recommended by the Ohio Department of Education as requirements for students to graduate from high school:

WRITING COMPETENCIES

In response to prompts reflecting different writing purposes (expository, narrative, and persuasive), the student will produce two pieces of extended writing that, taken together, demonstrate end-of-tenth grade writing capability.

In particular, each piece of writing will:

1. Develop a clear, focused main idea or ideas related to the prompt.
2. Demonstrate completeness.
3. Include supporting details appropriate to the audience, purpose, and topic.
4. Follow purposeful organization.
5. Make connections among ideas, paragraphs, and sentences.
6. Use a variety of words appropriate to the audience, purpose, and topic.
7. Use a variety of sentence structures and/or phrases appropriate to the audience, purpose, and topic.
8. Exhibit standard conventions competently (mechanics, usage, grammar, and spelling).
9. Be legible.

READING COMPETENCIES

The reading level of the selections and the sophistication level of the content will be appropriate at the end of tenth grade. Fictional and nonfictional selections will represent a wide range of subject matter, cultures, and points of view; items about these selections will include those that assess the student's ability to comprehend and use information necessary in everyday life. Selections will come from published school and non-school sources such as advertisements, articles, cartoons, charts, forms, graphs, plays, poetry, reports, stories, tables, and web pages.

Given a variety of selections, students will:

1. Utilize multi-step directions to accomplish a task.
2. Examine uses and purposes of propaganda.
3. Recognize an author's purpose and attitude (bias/slant).
4. Support an interpretation by locating specific information.
5. Use context to determine the meaning of words.
6. Differentiate between fact and opinion.
7. Draw inferences.
8. Make predictions.
9. Recognize the effect of common literary devices (i.e., simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole).
10. Locate a stated or implied main idea and differentiate between details that support it and those that do not.
11. Analyze the effect of literary elements (i.e., setting, character, plot, and theme). 
12. Evaluate the effectiveness of resource material for a specified audience/purpose.

MATHEMATICS COMPETENCIES

Competency in mathematics includes understanding of mathematical concepts, facility with mathematical skills, and application of concepts and skills to problem-solving situations. Assessment will focus on using mathematics, appropriate for the end of tenth grade, to solve problems. To the extent possible, items and tasks will have real-world contexts including the use of practical applications, real data, and numbers often associated with situations and problems encountered in the workplace and in daily life. The development of the mathematics competencies was predicated upon students having access to scientific calculators during assessment.

Students will:

Number and Numeracy

• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #2: Compare, order, and determine equivalence of fractions, decimals, percents, whole numbers, and integers.
• Estimate and compute with real numbers.
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #1: Compute with whole numbers, fractions, and decimals.
• Apply rates, ratios, proportions, and percents.
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #3: Solve and use proportions.
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #5: Solve problems and make applications involving percentages.

Algebra and Functions

• Use linear equations and inequalities.
• Represent a mathematical relationship using a table, graph, symbols, and words, and describe how a change in the value of one variable affects the value of a related variable.
• Create and analyze graphs of linear and simple non-linear functions.

Geometry and Measurement

• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #9: Recognize, classify, and use characteristics of lines and simple two-dimensional figures.
• Use measurement techniques including scale drawings, formulas, and geometric relationships to find length, perimeter, area, surface area, and volume. Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #10: Find the perimeters (circumference) and areas of polygons (circles).
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #11: Find surface areas and volumes of rectangular solids.

Data Analysis and Probability

• Choose and apply measures of central tendency (mean, median, and mode) and variability (range and visual displays of distribution).
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #14: Compute averages.
• Represent and interpret the possible outcomes for a mathematical situation and calculate probabilities.
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #13: Use elementary notions of probability.

Mathematical Processes

• Competencies 15-16 represent important processes that cross all the mathematics content domains. The contexts for items and tasks assessing these mathematical processes will be drawn from the content associated with competencies 1-14.
• Communicate mathematical ideas, reasoning, and solutions through the use of appropriate mathematical terminology, notations, symbols, definitions, models, and other representations.
• Apply problem-solving strategies and evaluate processes, strategies, calculations, and solutions to verify reasonableness; and use mathematical reasoning to validate and/or generalize approaches, arguments, strategies, and solutions.

CITIZENSHIP COMPETENCIES

The High School Graduation Qualifying Examination in Citizenship includes competencies with subparts (i.e., a-c). These competencies may be assessed with items focusing on one or more of the parts.

Students will:

American Heritage

• Use more than one source to obtain information.
• Identify points of agreement and disagreement among sources.
• Evaluate the reliability of available information.
• Draw conclusions by reading and interpreting data presented in charts and graphs.
• Identify and weigh alternative viewpoints.
• Identify and explain cause and effect relationships for major historical developments,* including:
• Historical antecedents (e.g., related and unrelated events),
• Multiple causation, and
• Accidental, irrational, or unexpected circumstances.

* The content for competencies 1 and 2 will draw from developments leading up to and results of the following events and time periods from world and U.S. history: the American and French Revolutions, the U.S. Constitutional Convention, the American Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, imperialist expansion, World War I, communist revolutions, the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War.

People in Societies

• Identify contributions of cultural groups to American society. (The phrase "cultural groups" refers to a number of individuals sharing unique characteristics -- e.g., race, ethnicity, national origin, and religion.)
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #2: Know that many different peoples with diverse backgrounds (cultural, racial, ethnic, linguistic) make up our nation today.

World Interactions

• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #5: Demonstrate map-reading skills, including finding directions, judging distances, and reading a legend.
• Analyze the global implications of post-World War II regional changes involving,
• The growth of international organizations (e.g., United Nations, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, European Union), and
• The end of colonialism and the development of national identity movements (e.g., the separation of India and Pakistan, the independence of Congo from Belgium, the reunification of Germany).

Decision Making and Resources

• Protecting consumers, and
• Preserving competition.
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #6a: Know the following economic concepts: a. All levels of U.S. government assess taxes in order to provide services.

Democratic Processes

• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #15: Know that voting is both a privilege and a responsibility of U.S. citizenship.
• Recognize that property ownership, race, gender, literacy, and certain tax payments no longer affect eligibility to vote.
• Identify the qualifications for voting.

Citizenship Rights and Responsibilities

• Alternative points of view,
• Relevance and reliability of information,
• Potential impact on individuals, groups, or institutions, and
• Ways to resolve issues applying the principles of fairness and justice.
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #16a, b, c, & e: Demonstrate the ability to use information that enables citizens to make informed choices.
• Use more than one source to obtain information.
• Identify points of agreement and disagreement among sources.
• Evaluate the reliability of available information.
• Identify and weigh alternative viewpoints.
• Explain the importance of participatory citizenship in a democratic society by:

1. Relating the rights and responsibilities of citizenship (including the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment),
2. Describing various means of civic participation, and
3. Analyzing issues related to civic participation in various nations.
4. Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #12: Know how the law protects individuals in the United States.
5. Give examples of rights and freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Identify legal means of dissent and protest against violation of rights. 
   

SCIENCE COMPETENCIES

Assessment will focus on content appropriate for the end of the tenth grade. To the extent possible, items and tasks will have real-world contexts encountered in daily life and the workplace. The competencies are predicated on students having access to instruction which develops understanding of:

Scientific inquiry, including understanding the nature of science and the scientific enterprise; the ability to conduct open-ended investigations, interpret findings, and communicate results; and the ability to evaluate evidence and make judgments based on evidence;

Relationships between and among science, technology and society, in the past, present, and future.

Students will:

History and Nature of Science

• Evaluate or design scientific investigations to formulate and/or revise scientific explanations and models.
• Evaluate information derived from popular and technical sources to determine its scientific validity in making evidence-based decisions.
• Given a personal, societal, or global circumstance, identify, interpret, and/or apply appropriate safety precautions and equipment.
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #3: Identify and apply science safety procedures.
• Given a particular scientific theory or protocol, explain how and/or why the theory or protocol may have changed over time.
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #17: Describe the ways scientific ideas have changed using historical contexts.

Physical Science

• Relate uses, properties, and chemical processes (reactions) of matter to the behavior and/or arrangement of small particles which compose matter.
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #12: Describe chemical and/or physical interactions of matter.
• Describe and predict the effects of forces (e.g., elastic, gravitational, electric, magnetic) on objects and on the motion of objects within a system.
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #9: Apply the concept of force and mass to predict the motion of objects.
• Analyze transformations of energy and recognize its conservation (constancy) within a system.
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #10: Apply the concepts of energy transformations in electrical and mechanical systems.
• Given that waves (e.g., sound, light) carry energy, compare and predict interactions of waves with matter.
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #11: Apply concepts of sound and light waves to everyday situations.

Earth and Space Science

• Relate internal and external sources of energy in the Earth system to processes and cycles (e.g., air, water, land) occurring since the Earth's origin.
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #7: Describe interactions of matter and energy throughout the lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere.
• Describe relationships among the Earth, other planets, and other objects in the solar system.
• Relate changes in the form and distribution of matter to the cyclic and finite nature of resources within the closed Earth system.
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #18: Compare renewable and nonrenewable resources and strategies for managing them.

Life Science

• Analyze and compare regulatory processes (e.g., neural, endocrine, immune) in living things.
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #16: Describe how organisms accomplish basic life functions at various levels of organization and structure.
• Relate the chemical basis of life to heredity, diversity, species survival, adaptations, and extinction.
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #15: Explain biological diversity in terms of the transmission of genetic characteristics.
• Relate heredity of organisms to the long term survival of populations based on mutations, variations in populations, and changes in populations as a result of differential reproduction.
• Explain how living things interact with the living and non-living components of the environment.
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #13: Trace the flow of energy and/or interrelationships of organisms in an ecosystem.
• Incorporates ninth-grade outcome #20: Describe how a given environmental change affects an ecosystem.