A new state law will temporarily relax the requirement that high school students pass the AIMS test to graduate.

Gov. Janet Napolitano on Friday signed a bill passed by the Legislature on May 13, the final day of the Legislature's 2005 regular session.

In 2006, current juniors will be the first graduating class subject to the AIMS graduation amendment.

Under the bill (SB1038), high school students could augment their non-passing AIMS scores with extra points from good to average grades. The extra points can amount to up to 25 percent of a student's AIMS score. The bill allowed the augmentation only in 2006 and 2007.

Emerging late in the legislative session that ended May 13, the bill was a compromise between lawmakers who support AIMS and the graduation requirement as accountability measures and those who feared that the graduation requirement would deny diplomas to thousands of students.

Napolitano has long said she had reservations about the AIMS graduation requirement but she said repeatedly in months leading up to the legislative session that students needed to accept that the requirement would arrive in 2006.