A few weeks ago, Mike Petrilli asked readers of his SCHOOLED Substack: “Are high school graduation standards too low?” The initial responses from Dan Goldhaber, Checker Finn, and Matt Gandal were a consistent “yes.” They were less clear on what to do about it, but there was some agreement that just doing more of what we’ve been doing probably isn’t a viable path forward.
The days of a single statewide assessment to set the threshold for high school graduation may indeed be over, at least here in Massachusetts. In 2024, voters rejected the MCAS exam as the state’s method for determining whether a student is academically ready to graduate—notwithstanding its widely recognized quality and its contribution to the Commonwealth’s 30-year academic success story.
But there’s no use crying over spilled milk (at least not a year after that election). The question on the table is, what now? I agree with the apparent consensus that we should consider more varied and flexible ways to evaluate student readiness for graduation, but I’m very concerned that we’re stepping onto a slippery slope that the (relentless) opponents of standards-based reform will exploit, unless there is a clear foothold on which to stand.
The tone of the public conversation today is not how to improve or strengthen the architecture of standards-based reform, but rather how to abandon most or all of its underlying principles and components. Instead of anchoring state standards on core academic knowledge and skills, the focus is on critical thinking, problem solving, communications, cultural competence, and social-emotional health. All of this sounds nice in theory, but, importantly, these topics and skills—many of which are surely worthy—are too often seen as distinct disciplines or subjects, rather than by-products of a more robust educational experience. They are also notoriously difficult or impossible to assess with reliability and validity.
Their boosters seem to view academic learning as a distraction from their favorite skills and competencies. Instead of mastering math, science, English, and history, students are expected to develop “literacy across content areas,” which I take to mean a high-level awareness of these subjects in the expectation that what you don’t pick up in school you can learn as needed via Google and now AI. This is not about broadening the canon and making the liberal arts more inclusive. It’s about minimizing the role of academics altogether.
Which leads me to conclude that, while we need to provide opportunities for students to pursue multiple pathways in high school that align to their interests and career aspirations, including new ways of assessing their learning, we cannot walk away from bedrock promise of the last 40-odd years of education reform: that all students, regardless of where they live or the challenges they face, should graduate from high school with the requisite knowledge and skills they need to succeed in a life of their choosing. This requires more than just a passing familiarity with the academic subject areas that provide young people with the ability to actually have choices.
Are high school graduation standards too low? Yes, and they’re getting lower. Should we have a multi-tiered or differentiated graduation standard? Maybe, but as a complement to a rigorous common standard, not a substitute.
If “multi-tiered” means that students with minimal academic achievement are given a diploma and told they’re good to go, then I'm against it—especially if it means that the adults are effectively allowed to write off students (or whole groups of students) who are struggling to meet basic standards. That’s assuredly what will happen if being in the “low tier” of graduation requirements means you just have to show up and barely pass your courses. I saw that happen myself growing up in New York when they used to give out both Regents diplomas and local diplomas, a distinction that I wasn’t even aware of at the time and neither was the general public, including most parents and employers.
If differentiation means there’s no challenging academic core that all students should master (or at least grapple with), then my answer is also no. That need not mean a full four-year college-prep course of study for everyone, but it can’t mean that some students can choose (or be placed into) a watered-down curriculum of business math, remedial English, general science, and electives.
I fully agree with Checker’s suggestion that a minimum standard for a diploma be set at a level “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.” Here in Massachusetts, that’s exactly what we had under the now defunct system where only about one percent of seniors failed to graduate on time due to MCAS, though even that was caricatured as punitive. The risk now is that there may be nowhere to go but down unless we come up with an alternative graduation requirement that keeps academic subjects as the core with valid and reliable assessments of learning tied to high standards and high expectations for all.
