Against open-access admissions policies for colleges and universities

Good morning, friends, and greetings from Columbus, Ohio, where the Fordham Institute board and senior staff are meeting today. Thomas B. Fordham lived and made his fortune in Ohio about a century ago, and we now serve as an education reform advocacy group and a charter school authorizer in the Buckeye State.

Today we wrap up our debate on high school graduation rates with comments from David Steiner, Doug Harris, Chad Aldeman, and David Griffith—which, in my view, point to low or non-existent college admissions standards as the real problem we need to tackle. Plus we highlight recent posts by Denise Forte, Nat Malkus, Andy Rotherham, Karen Vaites, Shaka Mitchell, David Nitkin, Chad Aldeman, and Alli Aldis, and catch up on Fordham’s Wonkathon—about how states can best implement their science of reading laws—with entries from Peter Greer, Bridget Cherry, and Amy Rhyne.

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It’s arguably never been easier to graduate from high school in America than it is today. Are we OK with that?

David Steiner:

Just a quick level-set. At last count, we will shortly have only six or so states that still require students to pass a high school exit assessment to graduate, and a few more that still require end-of-course tests. Even the number six is misleading: In Maryland, for example, students who fail the state test can take the “Bridge Project” instead. In Baltimore, about a third of students graduate through this method, with no data available on failure rates. With national graduation rates approaching 90 percent, the diploma has essentially become a certificate of attendance and minimal demonstration of learning, signified by achieving an inflated C grade in core subjects (in most states).

In countries such as England (where I grew up), the A-level exam, taken at the end of high school, was graded A to E, with U as the failing grade below an E. The motivation was immediate: Different institutions of higher education made entry subject to achieving specific grades in specific subjects.

But not everyone takes A levels. Compulsory education in purely academic subjects ends at 16 years old with the taking of the GCSE level exams in multiple subjects. Depending on their grades, students can then take a variety of CTE tracks (called VTQ or Vocational Technical Qualifications) or enter the A-level track. If they take the VTQ route, students’ remaining academic requirements depend on the chosen path—so, for example, a pharmacy route requires that students take a single A-level in Chemistry.

My point is that, although imperfect, the system is far more transparent in linking student performance with future options. As such, it does a better job of creating motivation, which is perhaps the most glaringly missing element from the experience of those American high school students who don’t aspire to entry into a competitive university or college. Moreover, the British system allows students who are strong in some subjects but not others to link those strengths directly with future options. Rather than proving that their combined SAT or ACT scores meet a certain percentile, they can enter university to study the sciences with strong A-level grades in their chosen subjects.

The second point is this. The GCSEs represent a serious academic standard (they are content-rich exams that generate specific curricula content) for what would be our tenth-grade students. Course grades don’t count, so there isn’t the same issue with course grade inflation. Grades on the GCSE exams count for everything that comes next, with a minimum of ambiguity. This, in my view, is a stronger system than the muddle of grades, end-of-course grades, and/or state testing requirements and ACT/SAT that we have in the United States.

Again, there is no perfect system. But a much stronger, more transparent linkage between academic performance at a key point in secondary school (tenth grade is used not simply in England but in multiple countries) and future pathways may counter both the trend towards no testing and grade inflation.

Doug Harris:

It’s important to see the historical pattern in the present moment. The “current” standards and accountability movement was driven by concern about declining scores and the focus on equity back in the 1970s (along with the rise in high school graduation rates that was much older). Sound familiar? If you go back and read A Nation at Risk (1983), it sounds like you’re reading about today.

Standards have always entailed a balance. More years of education is good for students (on average), and standards can stand in the way. It’s also good to maintain standards to ensure that students are actually learning something in the process, and that academic degrees signal students’ success in meeting those standards.

I agree with Checker that a tiered degree system is a good way to deal with this tension. This approach helps keep students in school, creates incentives for higher achievement, and provides signals of skill and success. Many states already do this and more should think about it.

Even if every state did so, it wouldn’t solve the problem, however, because “standards” are operationalized through course grades, too. Your recent Fordham report shed some useful light on this. We could require a “rigorous curriculum”—in fact, far more students are taking much more challenging courses, which is great—but if we make it too easy to pass those classes, then that partially defeats the purpose. It would be challenging and unwise to prescribe a specific approach to grading, but one option would be to have schools report course grades to the state and have states publicly report average grades to reduce grade inflation.

We found that the rise in high school graduation was caused by federal policy that led to the addition of graduation as an accountability metric. It might make sense for states to reduce the weight on high school graduation in their accountability systems, but I wouldn’t remove it either. Again, we need a balance.

Finally, I think it’s important to separate the pre- and post-Covid eras. Almost all the graduation rate increases were pre-Covid, but the steeper drop in grading standards, I think, came during Covid. It seems these trends are getting confused. The Covid-induced standards didn’t create high graduation rates, though they probably have helped to maintain them.

Chad Aldeman:

Couple thoughts:

1. I make a distinction between exit exams and end-of-course exams. Exit exams represented a high-stakes barrier to a diploma, but they weren’t connected to any particular class or content area. They were often pretty minimal standards. I much prefer end-of-course exams that are weighted as some percentage of the student’s course grade. Those are fully aligned to course curriculum but also aren’t so high stakes that they close the door for a kid to get a diploma. I’m not aware of much research on end-of-course exams, but we do have pretty solid evidence in the AP realm that it’s helpful for kids to attempt challenging, standards-aligned courses.

2. This issue has a real “universality” problem. Employers consider a diploma as a bare minimum requirement, so policymakers have been reluctant to withhold them. So I prefer a carrot approach to raising the bar. Kids who pass some pre-determined curriculum sequence and reach a certain score on the ACT/ SAT receive a special diploma that guarantees them admission at a state four-year university, and they automatically pass out of remedial courses. This is a real carrot, but it should be reserved only for kids who actually meet the bar.

David Griffith:

The reputations of the folks I’m disagreeing with make me hesitant to weigh in. But despite everything that I’ve read, I still don’t quite grasp the argument. For example, it’s surely true (as Dan notes) that the marginal graduate will benefit from a high school degree that means something. But of course, if that benefit is just about the degree’s value as a signal (which is what the research on graduation standards and academic outcomes suggests), then presumably the marginal non-graduate is harmed by the existence of a degree that signals their lack of academic merit. (And from the perspective of a social planner, it’s not obvious why I should care about one group more than the other.)

Similarly, I don’t fully agree with Checker’s concern that allowing more kids with basic skills to graduate high school will worsen credential inflation or push colleges to engage in more remedial education. After all, there’s nothing wrong with remedial education! Nor is it obvious that such efforts stop being “worth it” when students turn eighteen (though I do agree that, at some point, we want young people who aren’t getting much out of school to enter the labor market). All of which is a long way of saying that I think he and Matt are closer when they make the case for “thinking differently about how we raise the bar”—or rather, how we can create more bars, so we don’t waste our finite time and energy trying to raise a singular bar that may be immovable.

Better yet, what if we stopped obsessing about “bars” and instead focused our attention on restoring the value and/or currency of existing non-binary indicators that incentivize effort regardless of a student’s level. You know, like grades—or, since we can’t seem to fix those, some combination of class rank and average AP/IB scores for the ever-growing number of students who are taking those tests.

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My take:

Though there’s not exactly consensus about whether it’s a big problem that our graduation standards are so low, most participants in this debate did land on “multiple tiers” as a solution. Set the standard for high school graduation relatively low but then reward higher levels of performance (and readiness) with various special diplomas or diploma seals, both for students gunning for selective colleges and for those eying career and technical training.

I’m good with all of that, but with a few caveats. First, we’ve got to crack down on bogus “credit recovery” programs that allow students to “earn” course credits, and even diplomas, by clicking through some screens for a few hours. We can’t claim that the high school diploma is a sign of perseverance if we don’t ask students to persevere through their courses in at least a minimal way.

Second, we’ve got to convince higher education to set a higher standard than a high school diploma as the prerequisite for admission, as is the case for most community colleges and quite a few four-year universities. Maybe there’s an argument for “open access” for adults who left high school years ago or for non-degree programs. But for kids matriculating straight from high school, we should demand that colleges stop admitting students who are functionally illiterate.

Even the military doesn’t accept a high school diploma as high enough for enlistees. It requires an ASVAB score that equates to a 13 on the ACT, or about the 20th percentile of performance, for even the most low-skill roles. How can it be that your reading proficiency can be too low to keep you from working a food service job in the Army but not from attending college?

Have more to add? Please weigh in!

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• First up, Karen Vaites takes a well-deserved victory lap for making the Southern Surge a national story. But then she gets real about what’s next: implementing the science of reading effectively, which is even harder than it sounds. She brings the receipts, with examples of lackluster or wayward efforts in Ohio, Wisconsin, New York, and even Tennessee. “The best thing for America’s children would be a race among state and district leaders to implement this proven playbook most effectively,” she writes. “Red states and blue states, start your engines.”

• The effective implementation of the science of reading is the topic of Fordham’s Wonkathon, happening now through November 7. Catch up on the first three entries—from Bridget Cherry, Peter Greer, and Amy Rhyne.

• Meanwhile, David Nitkin and the Canopy Project take on school accountability with a survey of leaders of innovative schools nationwide. These educators claim to support accountability and want states to try some new approaches, especially in high schools, but aren’t sold on through-course exams, which feel like just more testing (and less flexibility). Sounds familiar.

• Speaking of accountability, Denise Forte wants the Trump administration to rethink its “dangerous” enthusiasm for ESSA waivers, especially around testing and accountability, which will “leave parents, educators and policymakers without important information they need to help students succeed.” Furthermore, Denise writes, “the federal government will need partners in states to do the dirty work. Unfortunately, history shows they’ll be amenable.”

• Nat Malkus writes up the new phone-ban study by David Figlio and Umut Özek—which found discouraging initial results related to discipline disparities but positive initial results on student achievement—and concludes that the effectiveness of such bans depends on how they are “designed, enforced, and implemented.”

• Shaka Mitchell pens a good post on bipartisanship and how to get policies passed in these polarized times. But I’m not sure why he and Republicans in North Carolina (and elsewhere) are pretending that now is the time for states to decide whether to opt into the One Big Beautiful Bill’s education tax credit initiative. There’s no sense in doing so until Steve at Treasury is done with the initiative’s regulations.

• Teachers are feeling gloomy, according to the latest EdChoice survey, written up here by Alli Aldis. They are especially down on AI and about their schools’ support for students with heterodox political views.

• Andy Rotherham is a patriot but doesn’t like the “patriotic education” stuff.

• Finally, “State Test Results Are Too Damn Slow” —Chad Aldeman, ‘nuff said.

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• “The Indiana Department of Education approved a three-year pilot for more than 50 Indianapolis public charter and private schools to collaborate on how to best use transportation and building resources.” —Amelia Pak-Harvey, Chalkbeat

• Jonathan Plucker assesses the real issues behind New York City’s controversial gifted and talented program, pushing for commonsense changes and a rebranding of “gifted” to create better opportunities for advanced learning and academic excellence. —Vital City

• Carla Jackson, board president of Akron Public Schools (OH), defends her support for private school choice. —Akron Beacon Journal

• Educators—and teachers unions—push for more virtual schooling, this time in response to ICE raids. I understand the impulse, but did we learn NOTHING from the Covid experience?— Naaz Modan, K–12 Dive

• “Plenty of cultural critics argue that this is worrisome—that the trend of prizing images over the written word, short videos over books, will plunge us all into communal stupidity. I believe they are wrong.” —John McWhorter, The Atlantic

• An ambitious Harvard-led effort is underway to help state lawmakers and practitioners rapidly evaluate and share improvement strategies for low-performing schools. — Lauren Camera, The 74