If you’re interested in having less classes your senior year, want to get ahead, want extra credits for high school or would like to earn elective credits, you’re in luck!

Starting next year, if you’re able to earn a Proficient or Highly Proficient on an AzMerit Math test, AzMerit Writing and AzMerit Reading test, you can receive 0.25 credits towards an elective. You can begin receiving these credits in 7th grade up until your junior year, where you can receive 0.50 credits. The maximum number of credits you can earn is 1.50.

For those of you who are unaware, you need a total of 6.50 elective credits to graduate from high school, so you can get 1.50 of those out of the way just by doing well on a test you’re required to take anyway. Because you’ll be stuck in the testing room until they release you, you might as well make the best of the time you have.

Students who performed well on last year’s AzMerit testing were given a Subway gift card for a free six inch sandwich. And we all know that teens will do close to anything for food, so it wasn’t a bad deal.

Dr. Thompson is the one is charge of MTSS, or the Multi-tiered System of Support, which is “the practice of providing high-quality instruction and interventions matched to student need, monitoring progress frequently to make decisions about changes in instruction or goals, and applying child response data to important educational decisions.”

I asked what she thinks this change will do for students and she says, “I believe the ability to earn elective credit by earning Proficient or Highly Proficient on the AzMerit exams will have a positive effect on our students.  Prior to this school year students were taking the exams, but there wasn’t anything tangible in it for them. We had encouraged students to do well because of the reflection on the school and had hoped to instill school pride and pride for their education.  However, that wasn’t enough.  We wanted to do more.  We want all TUSD students to earn Proficient or Highly Proficient, but also know there is personal incentive to do so.”