High School Students Get New Testing Options

The White County School Board expanded the list of classes high school students can test out of.

Director of Schools Kurt Dronebarger said the list includes eight courses in various subjects that students can skip if they already know the content. Dronebarger said students who test out of these classes will have the opportunity to take more courses they are personally interested in.

“No, I mean they wouldn’t be dual credit,” Dronebarger said. “College wouldn’t be able to test out of that. But it’s just, you know, a lot of it is say like foreign languages, if you have a Spanish-speaking student they can obviously speak Spanish already, so it makes sense that they’d be able to test out of that and take another course.”

The board suspended the need for a second reading of the policy change so students can start testing out of those classes immediately. Student Representative Joy McGill said the change presents a big opportunity for students.

“When I first was joining high school, I had been homeschooled and I had already taken Spanish and biology, so I had to take it all over again,” McGill said.

The course list includes English IV, Pre-Calculus, Anatomy and Physiology, World History and Geography, Economics, Personal Finance, French I, and Spanish I. Dronebarger said the list of eligible classes was designed by the district’s curriculum team.