The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce (DEW) will soon release Ohio’s school report cards for the 2023–24 school year. These report cards, which will be available on the DEW website, assign an overall quality rating (from one to five stars) to each school and district based on up to five individually-rated components: Achievement, Progress, Gap Closing, Graduation, and Early Literacy. The least understood of these components is Progress, which is based on statistical estimates of how much “value added” schools provide in terms of student test scores. This metric is meant to isolate schools’ contributions to student learning from the multitude of other factors that affect students’ performance on standardized tests, such as family and environmental influences.[1]

This post explains what the Progress indicator captures and how schools and communities might interpret Progress ratings.[2] Because of how these ratings are presented on school and district report cards, some will overreact to their schools’ ratings, while others won’t give the ratings the attention they deserve. The information below is intended to temper both of these reactions by helping stakeholders understand the value and limitations of Progress ratings.

What does the Progress rating capture?

The Progress indicator, according to school and district report cards, “looks closely at the growth all students are making based on their past performances.” Each school or district receives a rating from one to five stars, and next to this rating the report card provides a short description of what the rating means. These descriptions appear in Table 1, focusing on schools as opposed to districts for the purpose of illustration.

Table 1. Official descriptions of Progress ratings provided on school report cards

The report cards rightly feature concise definitions of each rating, but the five-star rating system (which the General Assembly codified in law) and the report-card descriptions (provided in Table 1) take some significant liberties in characterizing the underlying value-added estimates. In particular, they imply sharp distinctions in school quality when, in fact, there may be minimal statistical support for those distinctions. They are also vague in how they characterize achievement growth, which has led to significant misunderstandings. Table 2 restates the official rating descriptions in an attempt to clarify them and to better capture what the underlying value-added estimates convey about school quality.

Table 2. Alternative descriptions of Progress ratings on school report cards

One difference between the official school Progress rating descriptions (Table 1) and the modified rating descriptions (Table 2) is that the latter clarify that, in the context of value-added models, “growth expectations” are based on comparing test scores between students in a single year. Specifically, students who “met growth expectations” are those whose test scores at the end of the school year were about the same as those of other students with similar test scores in prior years.[3] In other words, growth expectations have nothing to do with whether students are reading or doing math at grade level, for example, or making one year’s worth of academic progress based on Ohio’s academic content standards. Indeed, if the average student has fallen behind in terms of grade-level content (as happened during the pandemic), then a school might obtain a three-star rating—and a signal that their students have “met growth expectations”—because they are just as far behind as other students. In other words, the Progress rating is a relative measure, not an absolute one.

A second difference is that the modified descriptions in Table 2 categorize schools receiving five stars similarly to those receiving four stars, and they categorize schools receiving two stars similarly to those receiving one star. That is because the method by which value-added estimates are translated to specific ratings does not in fact enable one to distinguish with statistical confidence between five-star and four-star schools or between two-star and one-star schools. Although the underlying estimated value-added effect sizes do indeed differ between five-star and four-star schools (and between two-star and one-star schools), those differences could just be statistical noise. We simply don’t know which is the case for a particular school or district due to how value-added estimates are translated to ratings.

A third difference is that the modified rating descriptions in Table 2 provide two possible interpretations of the three-star rating. Whereas Ohio report cards label a three-star rating as providing “evidence that the school met student growth expectations,” the description in Table 2 basically states that we don’t know with statistical confidence whether a school’s average student test score was above, at, or below the average for students with similar test scores in prior years.

The extent to which these last two points are an issue for a given school or district depends on the number of tested students used in the value-added calculation. That’s because, under the current system, schools and districts could receive different ratings due to differences in the statistical confidence associated with value-added estimates, as opposed to differences in actual performance. In general, the more test scores used to generate a value-added estimate, the more confident we are that a particular star rating is the correct one for that school or district.

More specifically, the informativeness of the ratings depends in part on the number of tested students in a school or district in a given year, as well as the number of years of annual value-added estimates that are averaged together to generate the Progress rating. Smaller schools and districts, and schools with a small number of tested grades, may get ratings of three stars simply because there are not enough data to determine what rating they should receive. Similarly, ratings that are based on just a single year of value-added estimates are likely to misclassify a lot of schools and districts. Indeed, research suggests that school ratings should be based on a multi-year average of school value-added estimates.[4]

Thus, setting aside issues related to the pandemic that might lead to highly unstable Progress ratings from year to year,[5] the informativeness of the Progress rating and associated report-card descriptions can depend significantly on the school or district at hand, as well as whether the rating is based on a multi-year average of annual value-added estimates.

Some rules of thumb for interpreting the Progress component in the 2024 report cards

• Put more weight on the Progress rating when more tested students are included in the calculations.

One should put more weight on Progress ratings for larger schools with more tested grades than for smaller schools with fewer tested grades. Similarly, one should put more weight on ratings for districts than those for individual schools. Perhaps most importantly, one should put more weight on the forthcoming 2024 Progress ratings (based on a three-year average of value-added estimates) than on Progress ratings from 2022 (based on the 2021–22 school year only) or 2023 (based on 2021–22 and 2022–23 value-added estimates). For example, if the school in question has few students and only two tested grades (e.g., a typical K–4 elementary school), then one should not read much into a school Progress rating of three stars, and one should not read too much into any rating (from one to five stars) if that rating is from 2022 or 2023. If, on the other hand, one is concerned about the effectiveness of a particular school district and the Progress rating is based on a three-year average (as will be the case in the forthcoming 2024 report card), then a three-star rating becomes meaningful.

• Focus on whether the Progress rating is above or below three stars.

One should not make strong distinctions between four and five stars or between one and two stars, even if a school or district has many tested grades and the Progress rating is based on three years of value-added estimates (as will be the case in the forthcoming 2024 report card). Going forward—beginning with the forthcoming 2024 report card—one should take notice if a school or district moves between one/two stars and three stars, between three stars and four/five stars, and, especially, from one/two stars to four/five stars. Movement would then likely capture improvements or declines in student learning (relative to the average Ohio student). That said, for districts or large schools with many tested students, distinctions between four/five and one/two stars become meaningful if they are observed for multiple years (e.g., if a district receives five-star ratings for multiple years beginning with the 2024 report card). 

• Consider the Progress rating alongside achievement-based ratings.

Remember that if value-added estimates are based on a sufficient amount of data, schools and districts that “met growth expectations” are those whose student test scores were about the same as those of other Ohio students with similar prior test scores. Thus, if students are behind to begin with, they may stay behind even if they continue to meet “growth expectations.” The easiest way to determine whether a school’s students are behind is to consult the report card’s Achievement rating, which provides insight into how students perform against the state’s grade-level academic standards.

That said, do not ignore the Progress rating!

Value-added statistical techniques, such as those used to generate the Progress rating, are currently the most valid way to isolate schools’ contributions to student learning, holding constant the numerous other factors that affect student achievement—including poverty, family support, and innate ability. Value-added estimates also capture student learning equally for all students, regardless of the knowledge and skills they had prior to attending a school. In contrast to absolute measures of student achievement, value-added measures level the playing field and incentivize schools to help all students learn.[6] Thus, Ohio’s value-added Progress indicator is the best measure available to assess school quality, provided that we are aware of its limitations and consider it along with other measures of student educational outcomes.

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1. Here’s a really nice look at Springfield City Schools’ International Baccalaureate program. While it is likely to be one of the smallest programs in the state—especially in a traditional district high school—Springfield’s program looks to be a huge plus for the students who take IB courses. Awesome! (Springfield News-Sun, 9/6/24)
   

2. Kudos to the Akron Beacon Journal for uncovering—and sticking with—the story of the accidental overpayment of Science of Reading curriculum funds to Akron City Schools. And cheers to the district for returning the extra money to the state quickly upon discovery of the error. As our own Aaron Churchill says: “Hopefully those dollars can be put to good use.” Since we’ve already heard that not every district received full payment, I think we can all rest assured that good use will readily be found. (Akron Beacon Journal, 9/6/24)

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Columbus City Schools, the largest district in Ohio, has long been riddled with chaos and dysfunction. Its failure to transport hundreds or thousands of city schoolchildren is just the latest chapter.

Just over a decade ago, the district was rocked by a data scrubbing scandal perpetrated by bureaucrats who tampered with student records to inflate district ratings. The ringleader, “data czar” Steve Tankovich, was jailed for his role in the scrubbing. Though avoiding prison, former superintendent Gene Harris hightailed it out shortly after the scandal broke and was found guilty of dereliction of duty.

The problems haven’t ended there. In 2019, the leader of the district-owned radio station falsified invoices and got probation. The district was painfully slow to reopen after the pandemic subsided and vaccines were available to educators, thus further aggravating student learning loss. Then Columbus went through a three-day teachers union strike that threw the start the 2022–23 school year into turmoil. This year, the school board has dithered on closing underenrolled buildings, something that would free up room in the budget to boost student supports.

On the academic side, the district continues to leave too many students woefully ill-prepared for life after high school. In 2022–23, just 35 percent of Columbus third graders read proficiently on their state test and 17 percent of high school students achieved proficiency on the algebra I exam. A staggering 58 percent of students were chronically absent (missing more than 10 percent of the school year). As for longer-term outcomes, a paltry 13 percent of its class of 2016 earned an associate degree or above by their mid-twenties. These results lag way behind the state average. For instance, only nineteen districts (out of roughly 600) posted lower third grade reading proficiency rates than Columbus and just eight were lower in algebra I.

It’s hard to imagine a district sinking any lower. But the ongoing fiasco in which Columbus City Schools is refusing to provide transportation proves the district is more than capable.

Under longstanding statute, Ohio districts are responsible, with narrow exceptions, for providing transportation to non-district students residing in their boundaries. This law helps ensure that all students receive busing no matter which school they choose to attend—district, charter, or private. The policy also promotes fairness to taxpaying families opting for other alternatives, while supporting student safety, reducing congestion on the roads, and ensuring that buses operate at full capacity.

The Columbus school board and superintendent have chosen to defy state law in a brazen attempt to deny transportation to students who attend public charter or private schools. As justification, they point to a provision that allows districts to deem students “impractical” to transport in certain circumstances. It’s true that other districts have wriggled out of transporting charter and private school students through this loophole, but none have abused this provision quite like Columbus. In fact, over the past couple years, the state has levied millions in fines against Columbus for failing to provide transportation to non-district students.

These fines have not deterred the district from continuing to refuse resident students transportation. At their August and September meetings, the school board declared a large number of Columbus charter and private school students “impractical.”[1] In doing so, they yanked transportation from families and students right as the new school year was beginning in clear violation of statute, which requires a declaration to be made at least thirty days prior to a school’s first day of instruction. It’s also a stunning display of callous disregard for Columbus families—most of whom are low-income and don’t have other transportation alternatives—and for fellow educators, who can’t teach students if they can’t make it to school.

In comments to the school board, a student attending Metro STEM school in Columbus voiced her safety concerns about having to use public transit instead of receiving yellow bus transportation. “I have lost my ability to feel safe making my way to school.” When learning her grandchildren were deemed “impractical,” one Columbus grandmother told the media, “I had to have a talk with my grandkids to let them know that they may not be able to go to their [charter] school anymore. That hit them hard. Everybody was crying. Grandmas are always supposed to have the answer, and this time I don't.”

Fortunately, this reprehensible disrespect for state law and the needs of parents and students is not going unnoticed by state officials. Earlier this week, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost sent the Columbus superintendent a sternly written cease-and-desist letter. He wrote, “It appears that the District has chosen to ignore its legal obligations to transport thousands of students, perhaps calculating that the District is better off paying future non-compliance fines than meeting its current legal obligations.” Attorney General Yost promised in the letter to bring the issue to the courts, and he has since announced that his office will indeed file suit.

With any luck, the attorney general’s actions will put an immediate end to district intransigence. If not, further disciplinary and accountability measures should be taken. Those might include initiating proceedings to revoke the license of the Columbus superintendent. Statute empowers the State Board of Education to revoke educator licenses for “conduct unbecoming” to the profession, which under state professional conduct code includes “committing any violation of state or federal laws, statutes or rules.” In addition, community, philanthropic, and business leaders should hold Columbus City Schools to account by promising to oppose future levy requests or withholding grant support until the district cleans up its act on transportation.

The citizens of Columbus deserve better than this. Leaders of public school systems should be upholding the law, not undermining it. They should be supporting parents and students, not bringing on hardship and anxiety. School officials, more than anyone, should be modelling for pupils and the community what good citizenship looks like—and that includes following the law, even when it’s difficult.

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Kudos to education leaders in Dayton

Lanicka Shepherd-Masey, principal of Gem City Career Prep High School, was named a Community Gem by the Dayton Daily News. She was nominated by colleague James Zimmerman, who told DDN Ms. Shepherd-Masey “works tirelessly to help students overcome a myriad of disadvantages that could get in the way of their graduation or career goals. She also displays the finest qualities – like compassion and honesty.” Awesome! Also receiving kudos in Dayton this week: Pathway School of Discovery teacher Harry Dittrich, who was one of just 100 teachers nationwide selected as advocates for the Society of Science, a nonprofit focused on science literacy and communication. Winners were educators “empowering students to explore, innovate and enter science competitions,” said Maya Ajmera, President and CEO of the Society for Science. “Their commitment is a testament to the transformative power of education, and we are thrilled to see the continued growth and impact of these programs.” Mr. Dittrich will also receive a $3,000 award.

Two new Ohio charters open their doors

Northeast Ohio Classical Academy began its inaugural school year in Copley on Tuesday. Head of School David Baum told the Akron Beacon Journal that he and his team are ready to bring a different style of education to their students. He explained that the rigorous education at classical schools is aimed at creating an enduring respect for education and the ability to evaluate and analyze ideas, within the overriding goal of developing students’ good moral character. “We will be focused on the virtues,” he said, “on making (our) students good people.” Also on Tuesday, LINC Academy opened its doors in Columbus. LINC stands for “learn, imagine, navigate, and change” and these are guiding principles for the school. Founder and principal David Ross tells NBC 4 News that teachers and other staff members are also laser focused on student achievement. Classes are small for more one-on-one attention from teachers, and each classroom includes a tutor as well. “Adding smaller class sizes while also adding tutors,” says Ross, “we will see our students achieve at a high level.” Here’s to a great first year for all students, families, and staff.

Transportation tussle continues in Columbus

In the above clip, NEOCA leader David Baum acknowledges that student transportation has been a significant barrier to recruiting families to his school: “We aren’t getting the kind of cooperation from local school districts that we had hoped for. Not one district is offering transportation.” Of course, traditional districts are required to transport resident students to charter, private, and STEM schools—within certain enumerated limits. As we have been talking about for several weeks now, hundreds of families in Columbus have been reeling from the district’s decision to deem them “impractical to transport”, leaving them without yellow bus service since the school year began. This week, Attorney General Dave Yost threatened to sue Columbus City Schools if they did not cease and desist with their designations of “impracticality”. That same day, the elected school board in Columbus voted to designate hundreds more choice students “impractical”. They also responded to the AG’s letter claiming they were fully within their rights to do so. As promised, Yost sued the district late on Thursday, going straight to the Ohio Supreme Court and including a writ of mandamus to compel Columbus to begin transportation of those “impractical” students while the matter is adjudicated. More to come!

Food for thought for Ohio’s charter sector

Texas’ largest charter network—IDEA Public Schools, also active here in Ohio—recently filed a petition to intervene in a Lone Star State court proceeding which is currently enjoining report card data from being released for all schools. A group of traditional districts stopped the first release of A-F grades for schools in Texas via a temporary restraining order earlier this month. IDEA leaders claim the hold up is harming families across the state. Report card data “serve as a transparent measure of IDEA Public Schools’ performance, informing parents and the public about IDEA’s effectiveness,” their filing states. “Without these ratings, student recruitment and retention, as well as resources available for students, could suffer, as parents often rely on accountability metrics to make informed enrollment decisions.” Families deserve this information no matter what choices they ultimately make. Kudos to IDEA for standing up for transparency and accountability.

*****

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1. Fordham senior policy analyst Jessica Poiner was a guest on Cincinnati Edition yesterday, joining the panel to discuss chronic absenteeism among students. Specifically: Positive approaches to curbing what remains a big problem in Cincy and elsewhere. Good stuff, although bypassing Jessica on the state policy question was probably a miss. (WVXU-FM, Cincinnati, 9/5/24)
   
   

2. Some excellent details in this piece looking at Science of Reading adoption in various Summit County school districts. Everyone sounds like they are fully on board. There’s a nice bonus citation of our recent report on the topic as well. (Akron Beacon Journal, 9/5/24) Akron area mom (and former elementary reading specialist) Jennie McGahee is super happy with the SoR mandate in Ohio and gives credit where she believes it is due: “I was thrilled when the science of reading movement gained traction across the United States. I knew Gov. Mike DeWine would take an interest in pivoting Ohio toward mandating the science of reading because of our state data and his wife’s interest in early childhood literacy.” Nice! (Akron Beacon Journal, 9/1/24) And what does the governor himself have to say on the topic? “What [teachers] universally tell us is, ‘wow, we’re seeing much better results,” he told reporters in Cleveland yesterday. “We know it’s going to make a huge, huge difference” for students. (WKYC-TV, Cleveland, 9/5/24)
   
   

3. This little preview of a new charter school in the Franklinton neighborhood of Columbus was published on Monday, looking forward to the start of school on Tuesday… (NBC 4 News, Columbus, 9/3/24)
   
   

4. One assumes things were a bit less positive when the sun rose over Franklinton on that inaugural day. Why? Because bus transportation for charter school students in Columbus has been a disaster from the start of the school year, as we have been documenting in these clips. Gongwer reminded us in their Wednesday edition that Attorney General Dave Yost had threatened to sue Columbus City Schools if they did not reverse course on their declaration of hundreds (if not more than 1,000) charter, private, and STEM school students as “impractical” to transport, calling it an “apparent new strategy of non-compliance”. (Gongwer Ohio, 9/4/24) The distraught families who had reached out to one local TV news station for help were ecstatic over the AG’s response: “Our voices were heard.” However, this was premature as the district had not yet responded to the state’s ultimatum either way. However, they did respond to the question as to how many students were declared “impractical”: 1,930 kids on 470 routes! Wow. (ABC6 News, 9/5/24) One of the other local news channels found a couple of folks who were convinced that the state mandate to transport these students was an impossible ask of Columbus City Schools. And by the end of it, AG Yost was not feeling optimistic about a positive response either. (10TV News, Columbus, 9/4/24) Late in the day yesterday, Columbus City Schools responded to the cease-and-desist letter, refusing to do either and explaining their justification for same. (10TV News, Columbus, 9/5/24) As promised, the attorney general sued the district late yesterday, going straight to the Ohio Supreme Court and including a writ of mandamus to compel Columbus to begin transportation of those “impractical” students while the matter is adjudicated. (Ohio Attorney General’s office, 9/5/24) One of the things that Yost’s office appears to be looking forward to most eagerly is receiving the discovery of all the communication around the “impractical” designation decision making by district leaders. I concur that it should make for fascinating reading. (Columbus Dispatch, 9/5/24)

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Many states are struggling to revise their high school graduation requirements, sometimes up, sometimes down. Indiana is home to perhaps the premier struggle today, but it’s not alone. Election day may find Massachusetts jettisoning its two-decade-old requirement that students pass the (eighth-grade-level) MCAS exam before graduating. Idaho is in the midst of an overhaul. Rhode Island recently raised the bar. Ninth graders in Kansas face new requirements. My home state of Maryland is moving—at a snail’s pace, some say—to install the ambitious “blueprint for the future.” Meanwhile, Colorado appears to be on the brink of lowering its passing scores for students who opt for standardized tests in lieu of traditional graduation requirements. And so it goes.

Much is also going on behind the scenes, where debates are heated and multiple tensions are tugged back and forth. The most basic is the perennial issue of how hard it should be to earn a diploma. If too hard, some kids—potentially a politically unsustainable number of them—won’t get this important credential. If too easy, few kids will be well prepared for what follows, whether that means community colleges, selective universities, blue-collar trades, sophisticated technical jobs, the military, whatever—let alone for good citizenship, competent parenting, cultural engagement, and personal finance.

Then, however, comes the next complication, which is that “well prepared for” doesn’t mean the same thing for young people headed from high school into, say, construction work, a plumbing apprenticeship, a chef’s job in a five-star restaurant, an open-to-all college, an Ivy League university, or the Air Force. How can a high school—or a state or district setting graduation requirements—possibly prepare thousands of dissimilar young people (who themselves arrive in high school with widely varied degrees of readiness, not to mention capacity and motivation) for the expectations and prerequisites of hundreds of differing post-graduation options?

Twenty or so years ago, we at Fordham joined with the (much-missed) Achieve organization and Education Trust to create the American Diploma Project (ADP) and a network of states pledged to prepare their students for both college and career. We concluded that they all needed to learn essentially the same things—and this went on to have considerable influence on the Common Core State Standards that followed a few years later. But the truth is, in retrospect, we were viewing the high school world through a college-readiness lens, in part because it was a lot easier to find out what college readiness means—at least readiness for credit-bearing work in open-enrollment state colleges—than to smoke out the skills and knowledge that are essential across the endlessly variegated world of work.

Now we live in a world of heightened equity concerns and greater sensitivity to injustice, unequal access to various goods and services, and a disposition in many places to deny differences that—whatever their source—may actually exist in our young people. We also live in a fast-changing economy in an ever-more-competitive world. Making all efforts to work out the “right answer” to “what’s high school supposed to accomplish” more fraught and politically charged than ever before.

Most such efforts nowadays settle on one (or more) of three strategies:

1. “College for all.” This is a nobly aspirational and utterly unrealistic goal, but it’s pursued by an odd coalition of equity hawks; student-hungry colleges; educators who went to college themselves and want their own kids to do likewise and so cannot imagine otherwise (or recommend otherwise without feeling hypocritical); and politicians fearful of saying “let’s send 70 percent of young people to college.” (The feared response: Which 30 of young Americans don’t you care about?) All these folks know and often acknowledge that not everyone will actually matriculate to and complete college, but they do believe that closing off the possibility of college too soon—before kids have even graduated high school—is a form of lowering expectations, usually in ways that are biased by race and/or class.

The reality is that not quite half of young Americans today end up with college degrees. In 2022, reports the Lumina Foundation, among adults ages twenty-five to thirty-four, 39.7 percent held a bachelor’s degree or higher. Another 8.9 percent had associate degrees. That makes 48.6 percent. Set aside the worrying fact that some possess degrees with little or no connection to decent-paying jobs and focus only on degree attainment. Perhaps the country—and its young adults—would be better off if we pushed the proportion with college degrees closer to 60 or 70 percent, which would be a very heavy lift in its own right. We’d still have 30–40 percent without college degrees. Then what? And is it really true that we’re doing a service to those 30–40 percent by making them sludge through college-prep classes, all the way through twelfth grade, rather than doing something more constructive with their instructional time?

2. “College and career.” I was part of the hardworking commission, ably led by Brit Kirwan, that developed Maryland’s “blueprint for the future,” which the legislature subsequently adopted (though it isn’t yet fully paid for and is a long way from being fully implemented). It’s got a lot of moving parts, but the high school part contemplates multiple “pathways” once everyone meets—by tenth grade is the goal—a high standard of readiness in reading and math. In short form, it reads like this:

The College and Career Readiness Pillar sets a new College and Career Readiness (CCR) standard that prepares graduates for success in college and the workforce by ensuring they have the knowledge and skills to complete entry-level credit-bearing college courses and work in high-wage and high-demand industries. The Blueprint aims to have all students meet the CCR standard by the end of their tenth grade year, develops CCR-Support pathways to support students in meeting the standard, enables students to enter a Post-CCR pathway that builds on the student’s strengths, develops a Career and Technical Education (CTE) system that is aligned with industry’s needs, and ensures that prekindergarten through twelfth grade curriculum, standards, and assessments are all aligned with the new CCR standard.

Tons of loose ends there, starting with the fact that the state hasn’t set the CCR standard yet (it’s working with an interim version), the fact that reading and math aren’t all that’s needed for subsequent success, and the fact that getting everyone to a uniform high standard by tenth grade is reminiscent of NCLB’s pie-in-the-sky promise that everyone would be proficient by 2014. (To be fair, the Blueprint recognizes that some students will take longer and that many will need extra help.)

3. College or Career. A handful of reformers, including my friend and colleague Mike Petrilli, want high schools to ease up on the traditional load of “Carnegie Units” that they require for graduation, most of them loosely tied to college-prep, and create space for a lot more heavy-duty CTE, apprenticeships, and the like that offer serious workforce preparation in a wide array of fields for kids who don’t intend to go to college or for whom college—college completion, anyway—is not a realistic possibility. This would be more akin to the “dual education systems” of Germany, Switzerland, and a few other lands that have developed technical education and apprenticeships to a high level. 

What they’re recommending—a close cousin of “college and career” à la Maryland’s Blueprint, but apparently with lesser demands when it comes to a common standard of attainment—is probably the most realistic about American adolescents but possibly the least realistic about contemporary American politics, as well as the capacity of U.S. high schools to deliver something that few of them have done successfully since the old days of “tracking” kids through the “comprehensive” institutions that the late Ted Sizer characterized as shopping malls.

If I have to choose among these three options, I’ll stick with the Maryland version, mindful though I am that making it happen would take decades of sustained effort.

Yet all three approaches are too narrowly occupational. They neglect the schools’ concurrent responsibility to meet America’s need for competent citizens, not just people who earn livings. None of these reformist visions deals with the need for young adults to be culturally literate, to be knowledgeable voters, to be good neighbors, great parents, and adept at managing their personal finances. It’s not that these outcomes cannot also be cultivated by good schools. It’s that the reformers, policymakers, and wonky sorts who debate the mission and outcomes of high school seldom bother to mention them.

Education serves both public and private functions, particularly at the “compulsory” level that is the K–12 enterprise. And both the public and private functions go far beyond performing a job, whether that job is making computer chips, building roads, giving physical therapy to the disabled, teaching physics, writing lawbooks, or driving buses. Yes, it’s important to earn a living, preferably at something one likes and is good at. That’s important both for one’s own and one’s family’s self-sufficiency and for the nation’s prosperity. But what about all the other qualities we seek in adults? And what’s the high school’s responsibility to develop, inculcate, and inspire those qualities?

A one-semester random civics course or psychology course or economics course doesn’t do it (and most of those are electives, whatever the school.) Yet when we agonize and argue over the college-career balance and try to formulate (and then revise) graduation requirements that we hope get that balance right, we seldom think about the other qualities that also need to be balanced. And today we’re not doing very well on that front, either.

Despite an unprecedented infusion of resources, the latest data show that American students are struggling to recover the ground they have lost and may even be making less year-to-year progress than before the pandemic. Yet, to a remarkable extent, educators and policymakers who profess to care about the problem are shying away from the most obvious remedy: Make kids come to school, and make their parents make them do so.

Between 2018 and 2022, the share of American students who experienced chronic absenteeism—commonly defined as missing at least 10 percent of the school year—skyrocketed from 15 percent to 28 percent. And, despite much public angst, the most recent numbers show that roughly a quarter of kids are still missing too much school.

Until this condition improves, returning to prior achievement levels is all but impossible. After all, even a few missed days can leave students disoriented—particularly if their courses are carefully sequenced. Moreover, research suggests that chronic absenteeism has spillover effects, depressing the achievement of peers whose teachers must repeatedly recapitulate their lessons.

Unsurprisingly, chronic absence is also linked to higher dropout rates and a greater likelihood of risky behavior such as drug and alcohol use. So, in recognition of the stakes, a cross-partisan coalition of think tanks and advocacy organizations is calling for a 50 percent reduction in chronic absenteeism within five years.

That’s a laudable goal. But how can it be achieved?

The prevailing consensus, as exemplified by Department of Education guidance, emphasizes the identification and removal of barriers to attendance. Is Johnny struggling to get to the bus stop? Move it a block closer. Is his family coping with illnesses? Host free-to-access medical clinics.

It’s hard to object to these efforts. Yet they are strangely disconnected from the current problem. After all, the rise in chronic absenteeism has been eerily universal. In proportional terms, younger and older students have seen nearly identical increases, as have urban and rural students, rich and poor students, and students from different racial and ethnic groups.

Barriers alone cannot explain such a rapid and universal shift. For example, longstanding transportation challenges didn’t become twice as severe because of the pandemic. Nor are lingering health-related challenges a plausible explanation (though it’s possible that parents are keeping kids with sniffles home from school more often than they used to). Nor has there been a notable increase in Americans’ economic distress. All of which suggests that the problem is fundamentally cultural.

In one sense, that’s bad news. Culture is hard to change. But there’s a silver lining. After all, if the biggest problem is that students who used attend school regularly have gotten out of the habit, then perhaps all that’s truly needed to reestablish the habit is a modicum of political courage and a not-so-gentle shove.

Admittedly, some previous efforts at enforcement have backfired. For example, suspending students for truancy is patently absurd, and student involvement in the criminal justice system correlates with even higher rates of absenteeism.

But of course, there are other options. For example, schools can and should prohibit students who miss class from playing in football games or other athletic competitions that week. And teachers can and should base a non-trivial percentage of students’ grades on “participation” including but not limited to attendance.

In theory, many school districts already deny chronically absent students class credit and require Saturday or after school detentions. Still, many districts don’t do these things. And even in those that do, we suspect that implementation is spotty.

As we write this, Ohio legislators are considering a bill that would pay students to go to school. And it’s true that positive incentives such as cash payouts, gift cards, and other financial rewards have a track record of success.

Yet in addition to sending a questionable message—effectively bribing people into basic, expected behaviors—such policies may be fiscally unsustainable. And, contrary to the assertions of some advocates, there is plenty of evidence that fines and other sanctions can also work when combined with effective outreach. For example, one comprehensive and seemingly effective intervention referred students to case managers and then penalized families who didn’t attend meetings.

Yes, many of these outcomes are undesirable. But so is the status quo. And if we truly believe that a public education is indispensable, we can’t demur when an unprecedented throng declines to show up.

In short, the point of "tough love” isn’t to win friends or make anyone’s life easier. It’s to get someone whose future matters to do something necessary and important.

Like go to school.

Education loomed small at both political conventions this summer—a shame considering what dire condition it’s in. But former President Barack Obama’s address to the DNC contained one reference that deserves attention and applause: “Kamala knows that if we want to help people get ahead, we need to put a college degree within reach of more Americans. But she also knows college shouldn’t be the only ticket to the middle class.”

Coming from Obama, who presided when the “college for all” mindset was at its apex, this is a big deal and an important indicator of how far the pendulum has swung from the days when support for career and technical education was lukewarm at best. Now, expanding it is a popular position, promoted by Democrats and Republicans, the left and the right, especially for programs that focus on high-skill and even high-tech, jobs.

Yet when pollsters survey kids in the real world, students report that all they continue to hear from their schools is “college, college, college.” That’s one takeaway from a study released last week by Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation.

As Cory Turner reported for National Public Radio, this leaves the students who don’t aspire to college feeling less engaged in school: “So of those planning to go to college, which is about half of Gen Z teens, the overwhelming majority say they have a great future ahead,” Turner said. “They're optimistic. But more than four in ten Gen Z students say they don't have college plans, and they are a lot less optimistic.”

“They're also less likely than college-bound teens to say there's an adult at school who makes them feel excited about the future or even encourages them to pursue their dreams,” Turner added. “Part of the problem these teens say is school staff spend a lot of time talking about college, but not alternatives.”

In the NPR report, Zach Hrynowski, a senior education researcher at Gallup, added:

“Even the kids who are like, I don't want to go to college. What are they hearing the most about? College. We're not talking to them about apprenticeships, internships, starting a business, entrepreneurial aspirations, jobs that don't require a college degree.”

It’s scarcely surprising that so many non-college-bound students report that their studies don’t interest them and seem irrelevant to their career plans. Nobody in their schools seems to be encouraging what they do want to do.

As I’ve written before, it’s likely because so few of these students are actually provided the opportunity to do a serious career tech program. Almost everywhere in America, even high-quality CTE is just a set of elective courses, taken alongside the regular college prep track. Just a handful of high school students get to spend significant schooltime focused on career preparation, including via hands-on apprenticeships—even in their junior or senior years. Everybody else is still sleepwalking through more semesters of math, English, science, and history, even if those subjects no longer interest them and provide little preparation for the careers that lie ahead.

The reason this is happening is because policymakers have failed to update our high school graduation requirements to allow students serious alternatives to traditional college-prep.

A case in point right now is Indiana, where some state leaders were trying to make room in high school course schedules for significant work-based learning by stripping out requirements for world history, foreign language, and fine arts.

But the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported some kids and parents, along with higher education institutions, rebelled, worried that the new mandates were going to mess up the traditional college prep pathway. And they weren’t wrong. Indiana was loath to create two different pathways—one for kids aiming for college and another for those wanting to join a trade. So what the state came up with was a compromise that made nobody happy: making everybody do work-based learning but also college prep.

The state has backed off of the changes and is now proposing a standard diploma that is focused on preparing students for college, along with an optional seal that would indicate career readiness. In other words, Indiana is more or less back to where it started.

We could do better. States should get serious about creating pathways that offer a real choice to kids and their families. At least by junior year of high school, let them decide whether they want to focus on traditional college prep or something more career-oriented. That is the only way we’re going to help all students feel engaged in their studies, not just the ones who have their sights set on the Purdues or Princetons of the world.

Editor’s note: A version of this was first published on Forbes.

Since 2022, public schools in the District of Columbia have been working to mitigate Covid learning disruptions by establishing and ramping up high-impact tutoring (HIT) efforts. Data on the outcome of these efforts are beginning to emerge, and a new report from the National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA) shows some minimally encouraging signs.

NSSA is an offshoot of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning and Systems Change for Advancing Learning and Equity, an initiative focused on researching how tutoring can best benefit students. Its new report looks at the first full year of HIT implementation in D.C. schools during 2022–23. Tutoring efforts that year concentrated on math and English language arts (ELA) for students in all grades and was focused on schools—both district and charter—with the greatest concentrations of students identified as at risk. It’s interesting to note that “at risk” doesn’t generally mean academic risk for schools in the district, but rather centers primarily on student socioeconomic status and homelessness, in the context of this wholly-academic intervention. Pre-existing academic need appears not to have been a driving force in choosing where tutors were placed, although some data suggest that academic performance may have influenced teachers’ decisions on which students to refer for tutoring.

A total of 5,135 students in 151 schools received HIT. Eligible buildings were those in which 40 percent or more of their students were categorized as at risk. Approximately 52 percent receiving HIT were district (DCPS) students, with charter school students making up the remainder. Overall, 6 percent of all D.C. public school students—and just 8 percent of all students categorized as at risk—received HIT. Of these students, 3,240 received tutoring in ELA and 2,558 in math. Tutoring hours received were highest in grades K–2, falling off starting in grade three. High school freshmen and seniors received the fewest hours of tutoring. Students, on average, participated in twenty-seven individual sessions. Seventy percent of students participated in eleven or more tutoring sessions. The report includes some details on the widely varying types of tutoring offered.

For students in grades K–8, achievement in math was measured by iReady assessments taken at the beginning, middle, and end of the year. These findings reflect DCPS students only; no data for charter school students were able to be calculated. Tutoring students began the school year 0.19 standard deviations below their non-tutored peers and ended the school year 0.14 standard deviations below. While tutored students still scored below their non-tutored classmates, the gap between the two groups did diminish, and students who received more tutoring shrunk the gap the most. Students who participated in more than twenty tutoring sessions were able to shrink their gap with non-tutored peers from 0.23 standard deviations to 0.14 standard deviations. The same pattern was observed in an analysis of Reading Inventory Scores for tutored and non-tutored students. This analysis covered a fuller cohort, including grades 2–12, but again did not include charter students. Outcomes for students in grades 7–12 were measured by the MAP math assessment, and students who received the most tutoring (twenty or more sessions) managed to outscore their non-tutored peers by the final test of the year. A tiny bright spot.

In terms of achievement, data from the annual PARCC assessment, administered in the spring of 2023, were available for all D.C. students, including charter students, for grades 3–11. However, the researchers conclude only that the findings—tutored students fared worse across the board than non-tutored peers and that those who received the most tutoring actually performed the worst of all groups—suggest that teachers likely chose their lowest-performing students to receive tutoring even though that was not a stated criterion for selection.

Non-academic outcomes discussed in the report include school attendance (students with better school attendance participated in more tutoring sessions, on average, and vice versa), student perceptions of tutoring, and tutoring program managers’ impressions of the program.

While these findings are generally positive, they are also rather modest, given the scope of the problem at hand. If the rates of gap closing don’t increase from the snail’s pace observed here, it will take years of additional work for tutored students to meet the test score performance of their non-tutored peers. Older students don’t have years to wait, and two cohorts of students have already graduated since the start of this HIT effort. We also know from this report that tutoring participation declines sharply in higher grades. Additionally, funding for tutoring in D.C. and elsewhere initially came from federal pandemic-relief funds, which are now exhausted and not sure to continue. All signs point to a diminishing effect going forward from the endpoint of these data, which should temper even the most enthusiastic responses to these findings.

SOURCE: Cynthia Pollard et al., “Implementation of the OSSE High Impact Tutoring Initiative: First Year Report School Year 2022–2023,” National Student Support Accelerator (August 2024).