Pennsylvania’s decision to walk away from heavy-handed reliance on the Keystone Exams as a basis for high school graduation acknowledges that standardized testing alone isn’t a reliable mechanism for upping students’ prospects for achieving success as adults.

While the demonstrate-proficiency-on-the-exams-or-else approach to graduation was built upon good intentions — the hope of better preparing students for college and the work world — in the broader picture, that initiative represented shortsightedness.

That shortsightedness should have been recognized sometime long before plans for the requirement ever were shifted into the proverbial high gear.

As can now be said confidently, delays in actually putting into effect the proficiency-or-else rule have been beneficial in preventing harm that some students, otherwise successful in school and preparing well for their lives after graduation, might have experienced.

However, the study and work — and the hundreds of millions of dollars spent — to develop Keystone Exams tests in algebra, biology and literature have helped to improve the state’s education system.

Even the tests’ critics admit that.

Pennsylvania’s move beyond proficiency-or-else recognizes what Gov. Tom Wolf summarized correctly in saying that “preparation for 21st century success cannot be measured just by performance on high-stakes tests.”

That was the thinking that prompted Sen. Tom McGarrigle, R-Delaware County, to sponsor Senate Bill 1095, which carries further the decisions of the past few years by state lawmakers, limiting the Keystones’ importance.

“The reason I introduced this measure was to return graduation requirements to their original intent,” McGarrigle said, prior to the Senate’s final “1095” vote on Oct. 15. “The purpose of graduation requirements is to ensure students can show proficiency in the knowledge and skills relevant to their career pathways.”

The prospect of holding back a young person simply because of his or her failure to demonstrate success on a standardized test clashed with the basic reality that one barometer for measuring preparation and success is not right for everyone.

As McGarrigle further noted — correctly — the Keystone Exams “do not measure the range of aptitude needed to be successful in college or the workplace.”

Expanding on McGarrigle’s point of view were Nathan G. Mains, chief executive officer of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, who said that “our students are better than a test,” and Dolores McCracken, president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, who said “no single standardized test should overshadow a student’s academic record of accomplishments.”

Under the newly passed legislation, students will have four pathways to meet their graduation requirements, two of which are meeting or exceeding a composite score across Keystone exams in algebra 1, biology and literature and/or meeting or exceeding local grade requirements in subjects tested by the Keystone exams.

A third option, which is targeted at vocational education students, already was provided for in law.

Included in the fourth option is a requirement for information from a student’s career portfolio, along with the requirement that he or she meet locally established grade-based requirements in the content areas of the Keystone Exams.

The over-emphasis on the Keystone Exams was viewed formerly as a big step forward, but in reality, it could have been a giant step backward.