Are high school graduation standards too low?
On Tuesday, I asked whether it matters that U.S. graduation standards have collapsed, and today, Dan Goldhaber, Checker Finn, Matt Gandal, and Ed Lambert reply: “hell yes!” We also round up smart takes on school boards, school choice, federal staffing cuts, and more from Robert Pondiscio, Katie Reed, Meagan Booth, Colyn Ritter, Chad Aldeman, Rick Hess, and Susan Haas. And Jorge Elorza takes a stab at depolarizing gifted education.
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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?
Dan Goldhaber:
This is one of those issues where it seems to me there are important network-type effects that are hard to see in the short run, but also where the directionality is clear.
Let’s look at the extremes. If we have very high high-school graduation standards, it’s obvious that those students who clear the bar benefit from the “graduate” label. And if we have very low standards, it’s obvious that the graduates, even the best of them, do not get much benefit from the mostly worthless credential.
This spectrum means that, while we never observe it, there are differential effects on students, and that, at some places in the distribution of standards, lowering standards is likely a net positive for graduates but additional lowering will be a net negative.
Indeed, when standards are high enough, we could probably give away high school graduation to some students, benefiting them (in terms of the credential, I’m ignoring the incentive effects), without doing too much harm to those who are working for graduating (and demonstrating that they clear the bar).
Where are we in this distribution of standards? That’s the question. I’d certainly argue that our standards are too low right now; it’s impossible to ignore the divergence between high school graduation rates and objective/test measures of learning. No doubt we are headed in the wrong direction, but we probably won’t know that definitively, or at least have a social consensus about it, for a long time—until we see that the high school graduation credential is no longer a useful one in the labor market.
Checker Finn:
Dan’s right: standards are too low now, and we’re headed in the wrong direction. I also think the implication of Dan’s comment is a multi-tiered diploma system, wherein there’s a relatively-easy-to-get version and various “advanced” versions or “badges” that get attached to it for kids who aim higher and achieve more. I’m for that.
Meanwhile, Mike, your “debate starter” doesn’t begin to do justice to the costs of low-standard diplomas. Besides the divergence between grad rates and achievement levels, setting a low bar carries huge negatives both for “graduates” and for the country. It’ll push more kids into college who don’t belong there and worsen credential inflation as employers seek alternate proof of true competence. It’ll degrade colleges, too, making them more remedial, forcing them—because they need students, graduates, alumni—to ease their own standards. It’s bad for the economy. It’s bad for international competitiveness. The U.S. will do even worse on PISA. And so much more.
Matt Gandal:
I agree with Checker that conceding defeat on high school grad requirements—or secondary standards more broadly—is not the right move for students or, in the longer term, for the economy. But we do need to think differently about how we raise the bar.
One lesson of the last generation of this work is that if we set a single bar, it likely can’t be high enough to guarantee all graduates are well-prepared for what’s next. That doesn’t mean that raising the floor can’t drive serious improvements—Massachusetts shows us it can—but that single bar is also likely to lower the ceiling if other higher-expectations targets aren’t also measured, incentivized, and rewarded. None of that’s new, obviously, but I believe it’s partly to blame for the step-backs in Massachusetts, New York, etc.
The other thing we may have learned is that there’s a shelf life for these metrics, especially high stakes metrics, and if we keep them in place too long without real adaptation, people may tire of them or see them as an easy target/scapegoat. And supporters might lose their mojo when it comes to not just defending them but actively promoting them as part of the future vision of education reform and improvement. A good offense beats a lackluster defense every time… OK maybe not in the case of the Commanders (sorry, some D.C. humor).
Anyway, I tend to agree with Checker that the solution is likely a multi-tiered system with a solid floor. And the metrics need to change; I love assessments and spent decades promoting and perfecting them, but we have to evolve to include other indicators of accomplishment and readiness. In an ideal world, every student would leave high school on a pathway with a “core three” under their belt: early college credits, a meaningful work-based learning experience, and skills certifications or credentials with real value. There will be some measurement and quality challenges there, but well worth taking on.
Checker Finn (again):
A bit of history to underscore what Matt just wrote.
Back at the very start of the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB, circa 1988–90), when I chaired it, we were grappling with how to implement the legislative mandate (permission, anyway) to create what Congress called “appropriate achievement goals” for each subject/grade tested by NAEP. The eventual result, as is well known, are today’s three NAEP “achievement levels” of Basic, Proficient, Advanced.
We on the newly created board didn’t know how to go about this, but we knew it needed to be done, so we had a bunch of consultations, seminars, and quasi-public hearings. My vivid memory was the late Al Shanker declaring to us that if we set only one level, we would certainly set it too low because there would be unmanageable pressure to ensure that most kids could reach it. He urged multiple levels—and we ended up with three.
Whatever you think of those NAEP achievement levels, we intended “Proficient” to be aspirational but correct, “Basic” to denote a major milestone en route to proficient, and “Advanced” to be world-class. (And, of course, we didn’t know until we got going how many kids wouldn’t even reach “Basic.”)
I think this way about diplomas. We should have a version that the vast majority of kids can, with reasonable effort in reasonable schools, attain and that does signify a recognizable level of attainment in core subjects. And then we should have higher/different versions for kids to aspire to and achieve by learning/doing/accomplishing more, maybe just in academics (akin to IB, maybe, or the College Board’s “Capstone Diploma,” or just bona fide college readiness) but maybe other versions related to CTE. And so forth.
My main message, echoing Shanker’s admonition for NAEP, is that if there’s only one, it’s bound to be set too low.
Note from Mike: We’ll have more great responses on this topic next week from David Steiner, Doug Harris, Chad Aldeman, and more. It’s not too late to weigh in. Do so here!
As if on cue for this week’s topic, Ed Lambert weighs in on graduation standards in Massachusetts, endorsing the draft recommendations of a council appointed by Governor Maura Healey to adopt end-of-course exams to replace the voter-repealed MCAS as a graduation requirement. “Common assessments help guard against inequities by holding all students to the same standard,” Ed writes. “They ensure schools are delivering on their core function—teaching foundational academic knowledge and skills.”
Last week, SCHOOLED pondered how to “depolarize” gifted education and make it more palatable to the Left. Now Democrats for Education Reform president Jorge Elorza has taken to the Wall Street Journal to argue that Democrats should not “let the extreme wing of the party speak for us. Instead of abolishing pathways to excellence, we will expand them. Instead of punishing a child’s desire to achieve, we will nurture it. Instead of leading with an identity-driven mindset, we will hew to universal principles that help all Americans get ahead.” I’m here for it, and I like that Jorge has endorsed private school choice, too, but I understand why some reformers on the left think Jorge has depolarized DFER instead of education reform by moving so far right.
Robert Pondiscio writes up the recent study on school boards by David Houston and Michael Hartney and published by the Fordham Institute and begs those boards to stop “acting like glorified PTAs.” That’s the perfect analogy, as both the study and Robert’s personal experience indicates that school board members tend to view their own schools through rose-colored glasses and think their job is to “cheerlead” instead of govern.
A former principal of a dropout-recovery high school in Tennessee, Meagan Booth, argues that school choice is here to stay. The only question is whether we’re going to make it equitable. If we’re serious about that, we need to address challenges around transportation, enrollment, funding, and more.
On the same theme, Katie Reed pens an important essay for CRPE—the latest in its “Phoenix Rising” series—about the need for “market enablers” to make school choice work by designing with families in mind. Among them: “unified information and enrollment systems with user experience designs similar to those of the websites we use to compare and purchase computers, cars, or even healthcare plans.” And, like Meagan, Katie is worried about transportation to schools of choice, as well as their ability to serve students with disabilities well.
Relatedly, school choice skeptics often claim that the new education savings account programs are a black box, yielding very little comparable data or public transparency. Colyn Ritter digs into five states’ websites to argue that isn’t true. I find his claims only partly persuasive. There’s very little information on those websites about outcomes and only a little about parent satisfaction, though he’s right that the Arkansas annual report is a strong model for others to follow. As Devon Nir and I demonstrated last year, testing is more common in these programs than most people think. Still, compared to what’s available for public (and public charter) schools, the data on schools participating in ESAs are way too paltry.
Speaking of data, Chad Aldeman digs into Louisiana’s accountability system and finds that good schools are good for all student subgroups and bad schools are bad across the board. The takeaway isn’t that we should stop disaggregating data, but I would argue that it does indicate that school ratings systems don’t need to be quite as complicated as federal law demands. A well-done growth model for the school as a whole (rather than separate growth measures for each student subgroup) does the job effectively.
Rick Hess is frustrated by the over-the-top, oversimplified, hypocritical, and sadly predictable reactions to news that the Trump administration is cutting hundreds of jobs in the Department of Education’s special education office.
Perhaps he should have waited for an Ed Week commentary by Susan Haas, which, though hard-hitting, provides the best argument I’ve read as to why the staff cuts to the Office of Special Education Programs will be so bad for kids with disabilities (if they go through). Namely, implementation and enforcement of the Individuals with Disabilities Act was already shaky, with a majority of states out of compliance. Without ED staff to hold states’ and districts’ feet to the fire—and a much diminished Office of Civil Rights, too—Susan predicts that many schools will simply ignore the law and stop providing needed services to students. “Now,” Susan writes, “our country’s nearly 8 million students with disabilities once again find themselves fighting for access to the free, appropriate public education guaranteed by IDEA.”