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PHOENIX — State senators voted Tuesday to extend the ability of high school seniors to use their grades to supplement their AIMS scores and graduate with their classmates.

HB 2008 would continue the practice in which students who have failed one or more parts of the AIMS test can boost their scores by up to 25 percent. The emergency measure still needs final House approval before going to Gov. Janet Napolitano today, just in time to help up to 6,000 seniors who otherwise will not graduate this month.

Tuesday's move continues the state policy of requiring students to pass AIMS — with or without bonus points — before they get a high school diploma.

But lawmakers balked at an alternate proposal to make passing other versions of the AIMS test given in grades three through eighth a prerequisite to being promoted to the next grade. Sen. Ron Gould, R-Lake Havasu City, said that would end social promotion and ensure that teens don't get to their senior year unable to pass the graduation version of the test.

Seniors have taken the test, more formally known as Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards, for more than a decade. But it wasn't until 2006 that passing it became a graduation requirement.

Facing complaints from students and parents, lawmakers agreed to a temporary reprieve: bonus points — but only through the end of 2007.

Rep. David Schapira, D-Tempe, had sought to put back the bonus points permanently. But facing opposition, he agreed to a compromise.

Under the terms of the deal, that 25 percent bonus will apply to this year's seniors and those scheduled to graduate in 2009. But the measure caps maximum bonus points at 15 percent of AIMS scores for the Class of 2010 — and 5 percent for those in the Class of 2011 and beyond.

Schapira said he believes that 5 percent should be enough to help most students who find their AIMS scores fall short.

Even that, however, proved too much for some lawmakers.

Sen. Ken Cheuvront, D-Phoenix, who owns a restaurant and wine bar, said he gets job applicants who are high school graduates, yet they are unable to string together an entire sentence.

"A diploma should mean something," he said.

"At some point, we need to expect more from our students, and our schools," he said. And he said all that AIMS does is ensure that "when our students graduate, they have minimal skills."

Gould suggested seniors would have no problems passing AIMS if they were being properly educated earlier.

He said the AIMS exams in grades three through eight are supposed to show if students have mastered the subjects being taught. But he said failing any part of the test has no ramifications.

"How we're doing this now is dumb," Gould said.

"We don't hold them accountable," he said, until they're almost ready to graduate.

"We need to nip this in the bud … and make sure that they're up to grade level rather than going all the way for 13 years and saying, 'Sorry, Johnny, sorry, Suzie, we didn't do our job, you didn't do your job, your folks didn't do their job, and now you can't graduate with your class,' " Gould said.

He said holding back students in lower grades until they show they've learned what they should makes the most sense.

Sen. Karen Johnson, R-Mesa, agreed.

"To move them on, to me, is almost criminal," she said. "They just get further and further behind."

But Sen. John Huppenthal, R-Chandler, said such a plan creates problems.

He said there was a similar requirement in the 1960s for students to get into high school. What happened, Huppenthal said, is eighth-grade classes soon became packed with 16-year-old students — many of them boys — sitting in class with 12-year-old girls.

National experts differ widely on the consequences of social promotion versus retention. Some assail social promotion as "feel-good" education policy that rewards students who don't deserve it, while others say retention sends students into patterns of failure — making them likely to fail again or drop out.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne called the augmentation vote a "mistake."

"The reason an objective test is needed is because subjective grades are unreliable indicators of whether students have learned what they need to know," he said. "If all teachers were tough graders, we wouldn't need a statewide test."