HARRISBURG — In the next few years, Pennsylvania high school students will confront two different tracks of state testing on the road to graduation.

The State Board of Education — which is responsible for setting the state's academic expectations for students — is starting to craft a battery of exams in English, math, science and social studies. Its work is aimed at following through on recommendations made earlier this year by a panel studying ways to improve high school students' preparedness for college and the work force.

The panel recommended that students take subject-specific "graduation competency exams" in addition to the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests that the state already mandates in reading, writing, math and science. Students would have to pass one set of state tests to graduate.

Board members have been preparing for what's expected to be a lengthy regulatory process by discussing the proposed graduation requirements at forums with educators and other parties this summer, board chairman Karl Girton said. It hopes to have a formal proposal ready by January, he said.

"This is a significant change in the way we do business, and so we want to make sure that we're doing it in a responsible way," Girton said.

Twenty-five states either have or are introducing mandatory high school exit exams, according to the Center on Education Policy in Washington, D.C.

According to a draft of Pennsylvania's testing proposal, the board envisions starting the tests with incoming freshmen in the 2009-10 school year. The tests are intended to replace current final exams, but students who fail would be given opportunities to retake them.

School districts could also allow students to earn course credits by taking and passing a test without taking the required course.

The state's current graduation requirements give students the option of passing the PSSA or an alternative, local test that is supposed to measure how well they meet state standards. Although high schools are increasingly making a passing PSSA score a graduation prerequisite, it's not known how many offer a local assessment.

Critics of the local option say there is no guarantee that the tests provide a consistent measure of a student's academic proficiency.

In a study released last Wednesday, the nonprofit group Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children found that among 126,926 high school students who graduated in 2006, 45 percent did not take or pass the PSSA, but fulfilled their requirements through a local test instead.

The study also found that most schools graduate significantly more students than, just a year earlier, had passed the PSSA math and reading tests over the prior two years.

"We have a serious disconnect between college and career readiness and the way our kids are coming out of Pennsylvania's high schools," said Joan Benso, the organization's president and chief executive officer. "When you raise the bar and say, 'All students are going to achieve to the standard,' there's no back door, no hiding."

Proposed Pennsylvania graduation competency test subjects:• <b>MATH: </b>Algebra I and II, geometry.• <b>ENGLISH: </b>English 10 and 11.• <b>SCIENCE: </b>Biology, chemistry.• <b>SOCIAL STUDIES: </b>American history, civics and government.Source: State Board of Education