High school graduation standards have collapsed. Does it matter?
Today we tee up a fresh debate about high school diplomas, plus round up posts and comments from Eva Moskowitz, Ben Austin, Jill Barshay, John Bailey, Chad Aldeman, Karen Vaites, Jed Wallace, Matt Gandal, Tarek Grantham, and Homero Chavez.
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Last week, for Fordham’s Education Gadfly newsletter, I wrote about the remarkable educational attainment gains of the reform era.
The percentage of young Americans with no high school diploma dropped by more than half from the class of 1997 to the class of 2016—from 14 percent to 5 percent.
For Hispanic students, it dropped by a factor of three, from 37 percent to 12 percent. For young men, it dropped from 15 percent to 6 percent.
The percentage of young Americans with a two-year degree or higher shot up from 37 percent (class of 1997) to 51 percent (class of 2016). A majority of young Americans now have a college degree of some sort.
The percentage of young Black Americans with at least a two-year degree shot up from 27 to 42 percent. For young Hispanic Americans it more than doubled, from 17 percent to 36 percent.
But I added an important caveat to this great news:
There’s a debate in academe about how much these attainment gains amount to real progress versus “degree inflation.” I’ve certainly been skeptical of some increases in the high school graduation rate, given all the games we’ve seen at the state and local levels, such as the adoption of dubious credit recovery programs, widespread grade inflation, and the elimination of end-of-course and exit exams like MCAS...
I didn’t even mention the ways that school districts, including several Ohio cities, are now gaming the newfound enthusiasm for career and technical education to find easier pathways to graduation for their lowest performing students. Still:
…that doesn’t mean all of these improvements in the graduation rate are fake. Doug Harris at Tulane University dug into this a few years ago and concluded that most of the progress was real. It helps that student achievement and attainment were moving in the same direction.
As my post was going to print, The 74 published a devastating analysis by Jessika Harkay that was right on point: “Many Young Adults Barely Literate, Yet Earned a High School Diploma.”
One in four young adults across the U.S. is functionally illiterate—yet more than half earned high school diplomas, according to recently released data.
Yikes!
It’s important to remember that, once upon a time, reformers worried greatly about cheapening the value of a high school diploma and graduating kids who could barely read. Indeed, over 20 years ago, Achieve, Education Trust, and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute launched the American Diploma Project (ADP) to pressure states to not just hold the line on graduation standards, but to raise the bar so as to align expectations with college and career readiness. But, as I wrote a year ago:
That was not to be. Soon after the release of the ADP recommendations, Bush administration officials issued regulations requiring states to incorporate graduation rates, measured in a common way, into their No Child Left Behind accountability systems. The law of unintended consequences kicked in, with the focus shifting from “beefing up the value of the diploma” to “getting everyone across the finish line.” Our national graduation rate went from 79 percent in 2010–11 to 87 percent in 2021–22.
I still think these were “unintended consequences.” I doubt Margaret Spellings (who was Education Secretary at the time) wanted to encourage states and districts to lower the bar for graduation. And I don’t remember any conferences when reformers got together and decided that we should ease up on the high school diploma so that more kids could get one. But ease up we did.
And maybe that’s OK? Most research indicates that end of course and exit exams—key strategies to maintain the rigor of the diploma—haven’t made much of a difference to student achievement, while they do encourage some kids to drop out. Which is one reason most states (Massachusetts included) have turned away from them. And while we might bemoan bogus credit recovery programs and the like, it’s surely better for teenagers to be going to school than to hang out on the streets all day.
The flip side, however, is that weakening graduation standards will eventually hurt the earnings of young Americans who do earn their diplomas. Especially if employers come to see little difference between the skills of dropouts and those of graduates. Plus colleges, desperate to put butts in seats, will admit many of these barely-literate diploma-holders, who will almost surely crash and burn. But that feels like a thin reed on which to hang an argument to policymakers to toughen up graduation requirements—especially in a populist moment when any “eat your spinach” proposal is hard to swallow.
It’s arguably never been easier to graduate from high school in America than it is today. Are we OK with that?
Chad Aldeman (and Karen Vaites) chastise New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill for saying, at a debate last week, that Louisiana and Mississippi have “some of the worst schools in the entire nation.” Um, nope! In fact, those Southern Surge states’ low-income and middle-class students both outperform their peers in the Garden State. Chad thinks NJ could see similar progress if it adopted reforms like the science of reading—which Sherrill already supports. I can’t help but wonder, though, whether the southern strategy will work up north given the strength of the teachers unions. Using proven methods may prove to be necessary but not sufficient.
Speaking of teachers unions, Ben Austin is frustrated that they seem to be setting Zohran Mamdani’s education policy. “Presidents Clinton and Obama,” he reminds us, “won in part because they had the courage to challenge [Democratic] party orthodoxy on behalf of the American people.”
Jed Wallace is fired up about the threatened closure of a legendary Los Angeles charter school (see “Fail” below), and wants to build the national and state charter advocacy muscle to fight outrages like this. Among his suggestions: Stop relying on foundation donations and ask charter schools to pony up real money to support the sector.
No one is more effective at charter advocacy than Eva Moskowitz, who takes to the pages of the Washington Post to laud Florida’s Schools of Hope program, which lured her Success Academies to the Sunshine State. “Florida now requires districts to open unused public school space to high-performing charters,” she explains. “Even more important, Florida has tied supplemental funding to performance. After five years, only charter schools that move students from the lowest ranks into the top tier will continue to receive support from the program.” Great stuff. And Eva, hint, hint: Ohio provides performance-based funding to high-quality charters, too!
AI optimist John Bailey testified before the Senate HELP committee last week, and his take on the technology is worth your time. He sees great potential in AI tutors but isn’t blind to the downsides of chatbots and the rest for K–12 education. Among them: “academic integrity and over-reliance,” “misalignment with educational goals,” and “psychological and developmental risks.”
Also on AI, Matt Gandal encourages educators and policymakers to pay attention to what it will mean for the future of work, and make sure they are adapting accordingly. See especially his idea for “AI Vulnerability Assessments.”
An early look at the causal connection between cellphone bans and learning reveals small but promising academic gains. —Jill Barshay, Hechinger Report
“A popular charter faces closure to make more room for an LAUSD school.” —Howard Blume, LA Times
The Trump administration is using the shutdown to accelerate layoffs and reorganize key functions at the Department of Education. —Laura Meckler and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, The Washington Post
We conclude with two more comments about how to make advanced education more palatable to the political left, these from National Working Group on Advanced Education members Tarek Grantham, professor of educational psychology at the University of Georgia, and Homero Chavez, director of the Early College Program at the Gadsden Elementary School District 32 in the border city of San Luis, Arizona.
Tarek Grantham:
Thanks for your continuous advocacy in support of advanced education. This is important work, and I support the effort and messaging. One thing to consider that I often hear from critics: Although we have decades of Javits funded projects, outstanding research and frameworks from illustrious centers and eminent scholars, and lots of people of good will, we report little data on the success of these programs, policies, and outcomes. It is all too easy to critique gifted and advanced programs because our reported success is meager in comparison to the continuous, often egregious, discrepancies in enrollment and services. Better messaging can take a page from Jerry McGuire and how he put it: “Show me the money!” The point: Results matter.
Whether we embrace nomenclature of gifted education, talent development, or advanced education, it matters little to equity-minded critics (and many current allies and advocates for advanced learners) without equitable results. Many of our critics (and allies) are saying: “Show me equitable results!”
Show me the data that talent development worked in public schools with under-represented Black and Brown populations, and in low-income schools.
Show me the data that universal screening, frontloading, etc. increased enrollment and promoted access and equity, without compromising excellence.
Show me the disaggregated data, for example, in X district, where in a rural majority Black school with less than X percent of students identified and served in gifted or advanced programs, school leaders implemented Y talent development program. As a result, the enrollment increased to X+Z percent. Show me the data where student achievement was tracked and XXX number of students went on to earn AAA achievement.
Show me the data, for example, in Q suburban non-Title I public school district with a diverse racial population, where the gifted and advanced program mainly enrolled students from affluent White or Asian backgrounds. Then, advanced education specialists implemented universal screening policies and practices and X number of Black and Brown children were identified and served, without compromising seats for other populations. Show me the data that represents an increase of XY underserved students and more equitable enrollment of all students.
For an advanced education movement that values equity to be believable, it is essential that the messaging report equity-focused success and results, preferably results sustained over time and regardless of unfavorable political winds.
Shift the narrative. This success data exists, even if just on an island. We have to do a better job of sharing it if we want to depolarize and attract greater, broader, sustainable support.
Homero Chavez:
I am all for providing students the opportunity to reach their full academic potential. The focus on services exclusively for gifted students often excludes many high-achieving students. We must open the door of opportunity to all those highly-proficient students who are ready to excel academically. I embrace a philosophy that welcomes more students to advanced programs, rather than just a handful of kids, and I believe that identifying students at an early age and providing them with advanced academic opportunities is key to ensuring that their academic development is not hindered.
Since 2007, the Early College Program in the Gadsden Elementary School District (K–8) has focused on identifying young people’s talents early on, based on student data as early as third grade. We have consistently identified highly-proficient and highly-motivated students using universal screening and building level norms. Our program offers 4th–6th grade students ACT tutoring that gives them an early exposure to algebra topics. It also offers 6th–8th grade students the opportunity to take mathematics and English courses for college credit at our community college. Many of these students take up to precalculus and English 101 composition classes before completing the eighth grade. Every year, around 300 students register to take college courses for credit at our community college.
The goal of the program is to identify students early and to create advanced academic opportunities for those ready to take on the challenge. We have helped more than 4,000 students take advanced math and English courses. Many students earn 21 to 37 college credits before finishing the eighth grade, and a majority of these students complete their associate of arts degree before graduating high school. Over the years, our program has attained remarkable results. On average, 600 students take part in the Early College Program each school year.
Again, the key components to our program have been early identification of talent, advanced programming (frontloading), a shift away from the scarcity mindset that only serves a handful of students, partnerships with our local community college and summer programs like Johns Hopkins’ Center for Talented Youth (CTY), and academic experiences that foster students’ desire to challenge themselves beyond their academic level. In the first 14 years of our Early College Program, more than 1,650 students in our district have attended CTY.
Our district is in the poorest city in the state of Arizona, located half a mile from the Mexican border. Ninety-eight percent of the students are of Mexican descent, and English is their second language. The district qualifies for free and reduced-price lunch. In the summer, we reach temperatures of 120 degrees and agricultural unemployment rises to 40 percent. Despite these challenging factors and socioeconomic conditions, our community has managed to send students to study at MIT, Stanford, Dartmouth, Yale, Harvard, Duke, Columbia, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, and Johns Hopkins University, just to name a few. Many former Gadsden Elementary School District alumni have graduated with engineering and medical degrees.
Great points on a real tension re: graduation standards.
On the one hand, NY Regents-style requirements that many students *cannot* meet seem like a net negative. Better for students to be in school and learning all the way until the end of senior year and depart with diploma in hand, than to realize they won't pass a test and drop out early.
NYS graduation rates went from ~60% in 1990 to ~87% today, and I think that represents at least some real learning and real value.
On the other hand, diplomas that don't require effort—and that everyone *knows* don't require effort—devalue the diploma so dramatically that the shift is a net negative for students.
The HS diploma's signal to society is "this young person stuck with it and did their work." That signaling value only holds if students are indeed held accountable for showing up and doing their work.
I think in the most egregious cases—like when students rely on dubious credit recovery, and graduate even if they don't attend school—something is clearly amiss. This is something we should keep talking about as a society.