The NJGPA Elimination Bill: Legislative Status and Potential Impact.

Proposing Alternatives on Math & ELA proficiency if the exam were eliminated

-Written by an Educator in Our District

On December 8th, 2025, the New Jersey State Assembly passed a bill by a 55-17 vote to eliminate the New Jersey Graduation Proficiency Assessment (NJGPA). The State Senate has not yet taken up the bill and has until January 13th in this session to do so before a new session begins.

The NJGPA should not be confused with the New Jersey State Learning Assessment (NJSLA), which is provided annually to students in Grades 3-8 (Mathematics and English Language Arts), Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, Grade 9 English Language Arts, and Science in Grades 5, 8, and 11. There is no discussion of eliminating the NJSLA as an adaptive test is being rolled out this school year.

Here are some details of the NJGPA as it stands:

• Since 2022, the NJGPA has been administered once to each junior (11th grade) class as a high school graduation requirement.
• The exam is one half-day of math and one half-day of reading/writing, which is much more concise than the NJSLA.
• The math portion of the exam is aligned to Algebra 1 and Geometry standards, in which nearly all students finish both courses by the conclusion of Grade 10 or earlier. 
• The English Language Arts (ELA) portion of the test is matched to Grade 10 standards. 

A cut score is provided, which students must meet or exceed to pass and eventually graduate, among other state graduation requirements. A student can pass in English Language Arts but not pass in math, or vice versa, or both. If students do not pass in March of their junior year, they must:

• Retake the NJGPA (retake is required either in the summer going into their senior year or the fall of their senior year). If not, THEN…
• A substitution test (PSAT, SAT, ACT, Accuplacer) OR
• Portfolio appeal (a student works with a Supervisor, Department Head, or teacher to demonstrate proficiency in the area of need)

At the time of the passing of the Assembly bill on December 8th, NJ21st covered the move to eliminate the NJGPA. One proposal in this article is that the NJGPA should be kept not as a graduation requirement but as a statewide proficiency tool. This proposal may not be adequate as students would be less likely to try, knowing they do not have to pass to graduate from high school, causing skewed results. As noted in the same article, this NJGPA elimination comes at a crucial time when the New Jersey Department of Education is moving the NJSLA to an adaptive model and therefore, it is becoming more challenging to compare high schools and districts as a whole. 

Arguments for and against the elimination

Arguments for the elimination of the NJGPA include students who meet every graduation requirement, including a successful PSAT/SAT/ACT score, and then go on to have success in college and/or a post-secondary career but did not pass NJGPA at least the first time. One other benefit to eliminating the NJGPA, while short-sighted, is adding back two mornings of instruction in March as the NJGPA currently disrupts high school schedules (with Juniors testing for two days and all other students coming in on a delayed opening/modified schedule).

Arguments against the elimination of the NJGPA (for keeping the NJGPA as is) include that eliminating the test would lower standards and having students less prepared for the workforce, especially in math, reading, and writing skills, which the NJGPA tests. As mentioned earlier, keeping NJGPA also compares district-to-district high school proficiencies on the same metric, as NJ21st has written about.

Possible alternatives if the NJGPA were to be cancelled

• Creating a cut score on another standardized test: This can include the SAT or ACT, which are already taken by most high school students for college admissions and an existing pathway to not passing the NJGPA the first two times. However, access to the SAT and ACT is not equitable as some, but not all high schools, offer the SAT and ACT in-house. This means that some students would have to pay for the exam and take it on a Saturday at a high school (or some testing facility) that could be a distance away. 
• Using NJSLA scores: Another way to hold students accountable would be passing scores on the NJSLA high school math exams (Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2), the English Language Arts exam (taken in Grade 9), and the science exam taken in Grade 11. A fair and high enough cut score must then be implemented. One issue here is that the only Reading/Writing exam is taken in Grade 9, far before the time to graduate from high school, and some students take their final NJSLA math exam freshman year if they take Algebra 2 as a freshman.

In other words, eliminating the NJGPA without replacement is not ideal.

Eliminating the NJGPA for juniors is likely to lower, and definitely not raise, high school student proficiencies in math and ELA. Therefore, the NJGPA should be kept at least until an alternate benchmark, such as SAT, ACT, or NJSLA scores, is determined in order for New Jersey high school students to demonstrate proficiency in math, reading, and writing prior to graduation.

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