Los Angeles is our country’s Mecca for magic and transformation. It’s where long-extinct dinosaurs come alive, marionettes turn into real boys, and Ryan Reynolds gets chance after chance to anchor film franchises. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the wonders extend even to the education realm. In December of last year, it was anticipated that just 54 percent of high school seniors in the Los Angeles Unified School District would graduate on time—a byproduct of the state’s exacting new academic standards, and fully twenty percentage points lower than in 2014–15. Just a few months later, that projection has amazingly shot up to 63 percent. District administrators are hyping the “dramatic gains,” but skeptics point to the role of dubious credit recovery schemes that allow students to make up for classes they originally failed. These programs exist in a black box, to put it generously, allowing no real scrutiny of their rigor or legitimacy. We need to know far more about the online measures that miraculously lift students’ fortunes. Otherwise, the degrees they collect will carry no weight, and the value of a high school diploma will fall like a worthless penny stock.
The “dramatic gains” necessary to improve America’s high schools will require more than magical thinking. Districts in every state have to adapt their practices to fit the demands of life and labor in the twenty-first century, inculcating work skills and real academic proficiency. Thankfully, there’s a bipartisan effort afoot in Virginia that aims to do just that. Governor Terry McAulliffe is attempting to shift graduation requirements in the commonwealth, placing limits on seat time and awarding credit for work experience outside the classroom. The proposal (versions of which have passed in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly) will open career-track options for students in their last two years before graduation. The focus on career and technical education, paired with a simultaneous effort to boost state school funding by $1 billion, represents an impressive reimagining of the aims of high school learning. We’ll be watching closely.
In general, we should be doing way more to get our kids to and through college. A four-year degree may not be for everybody—and we need to invest in alternative pathways for high school graduates who want to enter the workforce right away—but there’s no doubt that post-secondary education confers life-altering rewards to those who complete it. Sadly (and perhaps predictably), those advantages aren’t being spread around as evenly as we’d like. According to new research from Brookings Institution scholar Brad Hershbein, the relative value of a bachelor’s degree is much lower for students whose families earn less than 185 percent of the poverty level. The gap in salary between those college graduates and their more affluent peers actually grows over time, such that they earn just 70 percent as much as degree holders from non-poor backgrounds by mid-career. It must be noted, of course, that pursuing higher education is still a sound decision for those in poverty and near-poverty, who stand to benefit enormously in comparison with low-income students who don’t attend college. Still, it’s deflating to see the inequities of birth reproduced even after an ostensibly successful journey through the education system.
