Bill > HB114

This bill makes two primary changes to Ohio's education law. First, it modifies the age requirements for kindergarten admission, stipulating that school districts must admit students who are five or six years old by the first day of instruction in the school year of admittance. The bill allows for potential early admittance through an evaluation process if a child will turn five or six before January 1st of the school year, and provides school districts with the option to establish their own evaluation and acceleration policies for such cases. Second, the bill addresses a scoring error on the 2024-2025 science end-of-course examination, requiring the Department of Education and Workforce to review and potentially adjust student scores if a one-point question was incorrectly scored. If a score adjustment would qualify a student for a science or honors diploma seal, the student's school must award that seal. The bill emphasizes that no student's score will be decreased due to the scoring error, and it applies to community schools, STEM schools, and chartered nonpublic schools that grant high school diplomas.