Editor's note: This post is a submission to Fordham's 2018 Wonkathon. We asked assorted education policy experts whether our graduation requirements need to change, in light of diploma scandals in D.C., Maryland, and elsewhere. Other entries can be found here.

As the recent debacle at Washington D.C.’s Ballou High school showed, it’s not always clear whether graduation rates mean anything about whether a student is prepared for college or career. But when it comes to students with disabilities, we have reason to believe high school graduation rates are simply a farce.

This past November, The Hechinger Report reported shocking variation across states when it comes to graduation rates for students who qualify for special education. Arkansas is on the high end, with 84 percent of students in special education earning a high school diploma. At the other end of the spectrum were states like Mississippi, where just 31 percent of students with a disability graduated.

We dug into the data to try to figure out what might explain the difference between these two southern, high-poverty states.

Does Mississippi have more severe special needs?

We began by looking at whether students in Arkansas have less severe disabilities than students in other states. Table 1 shows the 2015 special education enrollments by disability for Arkansas and Mississippi. We’ve bolded the disabilities that are generally considered most severe. Differences between the two states are slight and cannot possibly explain a nearly 50 percentage point difference in graduation rates.

Table 1. Students in special education by disability in Arkansas and Mississippi

Does Arkansas do better?

We used the only readily available proxy for student achievement (test scores) to see if there’s evidence that Arkansas students receive a high-quality education, justifying high diploma attainment. (We recognize that test scores are by no means a perfect proxy of achievement, especially for students with disabilities.)

We compared graduation, math proficiency, and English language arts (ELA) proficiency rates for students with disabilities in Arkansas and for all students in the state. While there is less than a 3 percentage point difference in graduation rates, there is a huge 30 and 38 percentage point difference in math and ELA proficiency, respectively. Arkansas schools are graduating students with disabilities at almost the same rate as their non-disabled peers, but they are certainly not educating them at the same rate. 

Alarmingly, a mere 14 percent of all disabled Arkansas students are deemed proficient in reading and 17 percent in math, but the vast majority are still graduating.

Table 2. Graduation and ACT Aspire proficiency rates in math and ELA

Does Arkansas have lower standards for graduation?

If students aren’t more significantly impaired and academic achievement isn’t remarkable, maybe it is simply easier to graduate from high school in Arkansas than in other states. In fact, several years ago (2013–14), Arkansas created new “Smart Core Course” graduation requirements, which create a more rigorous graduation diploma option from the traditional “Core” requirements. In math, for example, students can graduate if they have completed geometry, whereas algebra II is the requirement for the Smart Core degree. The difference between what students at each end of this spectrum know and can do by the time they leave high school is vastly different, yet their diploma is the same.

Arkansas students who still can’t pass lower-level courses have yet another path to graduation. For example, the Bryant School District explicitly states that students can receive a diploma if they “meet the requirements of their Individual Education Plan (IEP).”

Most likely, this helps explain the high graduation rates for Arkansas students with a disability. These students are graduating with lower expectations. This conclusion is reinforced by a study of career and technical education in Arkansas, which found that students with disabilities were substantially overrepresented in the career concentrations of “manufacturing” and “transportation, distribution, and logistics,” while underrepresented in “finance,” “health sciences,” and “education and training.” There are simply different career paths and expectations for students with disabilities in Arkansas.

Then what does a high school diploma mean for students with disabilities?

It seems clear from this data that the differences between Arkansas’s very high graduation rates and Mississippi’s abysmal rates is little more than lower standards for graduation. Is that something to celebrate?

Clearly, some disabilities prevent a student from being able to achieve academically at rates comparable to other students. As a former high school special educator and a parent, we support the notion of allowing all students a reasonable path to graduation. At the same time, it is all too easy for well-meaning educators to give up on students with disabilities, to graduate them without either the academic skills to enter college, the vocational skills to get a job, or the life skills to live independently.

Let’s face it. A high school diploma typically means almost nothing for students with disabilities. And no one is held accountable for improving the odds for students who face some of the greatest life challenges.

It’s past time to dramatically rethink what purpose a high school diploma should serve for students with disabilities, and perhaps for all students. At minimum, if alternative diplomas or routes to graduation, such as meeting IEP goals, are offered, they must be pegged to competencies or skills and reflect high expectations.

Rather than incentivizing inflated graduation rates, states should ask schools and districts to demonstrate that they have serious intervention and support systems for students with disabilities; that they are finding innovative new ways to prepare more of them for college and life; and that they can demonstrate success with ever-increasing rates of college and career placement and other measures of long-term life success.

At the end of the day, we need to find better ways to prepare students with disabilities for college and life, not just pass them off to the next system to let them down.

Despite genetic hardwiring of babies’ brains to learn language, emerging evidence suggests that different languages are acquired in different ways based on their specific characteristics. Most of what child development and education professionals know about language acquisition in young children is based on monolingual studies and is difficult to apply to bilingual children. But a large and growing number of young boys and girls worldwide are operationally bilingual—which means they receive regular input in two or more languages between birth and adolescence. Because language instruction and assessments are typically monolingual, understanding how simultaneous bilingual acquisition affects the taught/tested language could be an important step in supporting language development for young children. Does a low English score mean that a child is academically behind and in need of intervention? Or is she exhibiting a normal pattern based on her amount of exposure at home? A group of United Kingdom–based researchers believes they have made a breakthrough in the area of language development measurement that may open new avenues of education and support for dual language learners.

Their work involved three separate projects. The first consisted of collecting data on language exposure in a cohort of 372 typically-developing two-year-olds simultaneously learning English and one of thirteen other languages. They assessed variables such as the amount of each language overheard by the child in the home, which parent spoke which language, whether parents were fluently bilingual, overall language exposure, and various demographic data. The researchers developed a checklist of one hundred familiar words in English and the other languages, remaining sensitive to cultural differences to construct the most universal lists possible, and parents reported whether their children recognized or could say the words in both languages. This resulted in development scores in both languages. As has been observed in other research and practice, the English scores for these bilingual children were generally below the average achieved by monolingual English learners. And large variations were observed among the non-English languages, which indicated that some linguistics-based “interference” caused by simultaneous bilingual acquisition might be at work in suppressing the English scores.

The second project tested the relationship between the two sets of scores, looking for the variables that most influenced English language outcomes. The typical family-based variables came into play—parental education levels, socioeconomic status, and overall language exposure—but researchers also tested an outside variable called “linguistic distance,” or the difference between English and the other test language. This distance was determined by a number of linguistic factors, including lexical and phonological overlaps—words that sound similar and mean similar things in two different languages—as well as the relative complexity of pronunciation and the subject-verb-object structure in which the words typically occur in each language. They determined that the more distant the additional language was from English, the lower the child’s scores would be in both perception and production of English test words. Put another way, two-year-olds learning both Mandarin and English at the same time will have a lower average English vocabulary score than two-year-olds learning both French and English at the same time. And both sets of bilingual children will have a lower average score than monolingual two-year-olds exposed only to English. This isn’t because they’re learning English at an improper rate, it’s because learning two very different languages at once is difficult, even for youngsters whose brains are fully capable of the task. Researchers were able to create a weighting system to determine a more accurate average English score based on this weighting, leading to a new assessment tool—the UK Bilingual Toddlers Assessment Tool (UKBTAT). It takes into account the interference that bilingualism exerted on children learning English, which results in a more accurate assessment of proficiency and better tools to help those who need assistance.

To test the UKBTAT’s validity, the final project used the tool to predict the English scores of a new cohort of fifty-eight two-year-olds bilingual in English and other languages not initially studied in the development of the UKBTAT. The researchers assessed the new languages for linguistic distance from English and plugged them into the UKBTAT protocol, along with family-based variables. The weighting factors accurately predicted the children’s English vocabulary score, confirming the validity of the tool.

The researchers believe that this new English assessment protocol, if widely implemented in the UK, will reduce the number of children who are wrongly diagnosed with language delays, and will help teachers, speech therapists, and healthcare providers more easily find children who are truly in need of services. Additionally, the types of assistance needed by young children learning two languages should, theoretically, vary based on the linguistic distance of those two languages. One size does not fit all, especially when it comes to language acquisition and development from toddlerhood into school age. The more we know and the more effective tools that teachers can have at the ready, the better.

The NAGC Board voted to support the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) position statement on Providing Opportunities for Students with Exceptional Mathematical Promise. However, a video by Jo Boaler has caused some to question the importance of identifying gifted students. This is a response from the NAGC STEM Network Working Group.

In 1980, in their Agenda for Action, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) asserted, “The student most neglected in terms of realizing full potential, is the gifted student of mathematics. Outstanding mathematical ability is a precious societal resource, sorely needed to maintain leadership in a technological world.” This is even truer today, nearly forty years later as the world becomes increasingly technological and interdependent. In 1995, NCTM appointed a Task Force on what they termed “mathematically promising” students and charged the task force with rethinking the traditional definition of mathematically gifted students to broaden it to the more inclusive idea of mathematically promising students. The Task Force defined those students as ones who have the potential to become the leaders and problem solvers of the future. They averred that mathematical promise is a function of ability, motivation, belief, and experience or opportunity, all variables that are not fixed and need to be developed so that success for these promising students can be maximized. In 2016, the NCTM Board of Directors reaffirmed the need to recognize, nurture, and challenge these students when they approved a position on Providing Opportunities for Students with Exceptional Mathematical Promise to answer the question “How can teachers and schools identify and support students with exceptional mathematical promise to nurture and sustain their mathematical development and interest in mathematics?” They noted that “exceptional mathematical promise is evenly distributed across geographic, demographic, and economic boundaries, and growing and leveraging such mathematical promise is essential for our field and society to thrive.”

As acknowledged by the NCTM board, the use of the term ‘gifted’ may overly restrict students receiving needed services, but regardless of the label, it is necessary to provide these students with “differentiated instruction in an engaging mathematical learning environment that ignites and enhances their mathematical passions and challenges them to make continuing progress throughout their K–16 schooling and beyond.” Research has shown that this is not only important for students with mathematical promise but for all students with exceptional promise.

The following are just a few of the reasons that gifted services are critical.

1. Underserved populations: Some of the gifted students most hurt when their needs are not met are gifted minority students, students from poverty, and twice-exceptional students. They often do not have access to the same resources as students from more privileged backgrounds, such as private schools and other enriching programs, and must get their support from public school programs.
2. Productive Struggle: Brain research reminds us that challenge and making mistakes add to brain growth, and this is important for our highest-performing students. For many of these students, when they are languishing in regular classrooms, they are never challenged enough to make mistakes and benefit from constructive feedback and having to defend their reasoning They might consistently get A’s without ever studying because they have already mastered the material. “Productive struggle” is especially important for these students. They need to be challenged to make continuous progress and learn something new every day if we are going to foster their brain growth, persistence and resilience.
3. Social/emotional needs: For many of these students, being in a good gifted program is the first time they feel free to be themselves, realizing that they aren’t freaks and do not need to hide their abilities. This excitement and passion for learning is critical and does not happen when students are bored with repetition of things they learned years earlier. As noted by a student in a university program for advanced middle and high school math students, “The time I spent at the mathematics program last year was beyond any experience I could have ever received at my high school. It has motivated me to move beyond expectations and discover mathematics for what it truly is.” As noted in the NCTM position statement, students with exceptional promise “must be engaged in enriching learning opportunities during and outside the school day to allow them to pursue their interests, develop their talent, and maintain their passion.”
4. Special Education essentials: Other countries put an emphasis on developing students’ academic abilities and passions to the greatest extent possible. We have no compunction about choosing the best to represent us in the Olympics or take the lead in a play or first violin in an orchestra, but we balk when it comes to academics. Special education programs are just as important for academically advanced students, and services and resources for students with exceptional academic promise, including professional development for teachers, should be required, just as they are for other special education programs.
5. Long-term effects of GT programs: Gifted programming positively influences students’ futures and the future of our country. Several longitudinal studies have shown that gifted programs have a positive effect on students’ post-secondary achievements. NAGC is currently updating Research that Supports the Need for and Benefits of Gifted Education where these needs and benefits have been documented for decades.

Every child, with excellent instruction, can learn at a much higher level, and a wide variety of stimulating challenges, opportunities and resources should be available to all students. But given similar exposure and instruction, some children are capable of or have a greater passion for understanding concepts on a deeper, more complex, faster and/or more creative level.

Refraining from offering suitable curricular challenges to students who are ready for them, whether called gifted, talented, exceptionally promising, advanced, or something else because other students are not ready for or do not have an interest in them is not ethically justifiable.

The STEM Network Working Group is chaired by Linda J. Sheffield.

The views expressed herein represent the opinions of the author and not necessarily the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Ohio legislators recently unveiled a $2.6 billion capital budget bill for fiscal years 2019 and 2020. Inside this year’s iteration are routine items like park and correctional facilities maintenance. But there are also more curious requests, including $5 million for a glass-enclosed corridor at COSI, $4 million for a potential soccer stadium in Cincinnati, $1 million to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and a quarter million for barn renovations in Delaware County. Enacted in even-numbered years, the capital budget generally funds building and infrastructure projects; it is separate from the state’s larger operating budget, which is passed in odd-numbered years.

A major chunk of the capital budget is also dedicated to education. This includes $485 million to higher education and $600 million to K–12. Practically all of the K–12 allotment flows to Ohio school districts (including joint vocational) through the Classroom Facilities Assistance Program or CFAP. In general, this program offers funding based on district wealth, prioritizing support for less wealthy districts in need of facility upgrades (contingent on them raising local tax revenue via bond issues). Established shortly after the first of several DeRolph v. State of Ohio school-funding cases, CFAP has disbursed over $11.5 billion to upgrade more than 1,100 schools throughout Ohio since 1997. The proposed FY 2019–20 capital budget keeps the spigot open for districts’ facility projects over the next two years.

All this brings us to public charter schools. Despite the millions budgeted for other projects, charters are provided no new facility funds in this year’s capital budget. This continues policies that have long failed to ensure that charter students learn in adequate, let alone state-of-the-art, facilities. After years of providing charters no money specifically for facilities, Ohio lawmakers began to help in 2013 by providing a small facility allowance. Today, this amount is roughly $200 per student per year, equivalent to a $16.6 million line item in the state operating budget. In 2015, legislators also enacted a $25 million Community School Classroom Facility (CSCF) program for high-performing charters. In the first round of grants, eight of Ohio’s almost 400 charter schools received a total of $17 million for capital improvements; awards for the second round of grants, worth just over $4 million, were recently announced. Unlike districts, charter schools cannot raise local tax revenue for their facility needs. 

State support for charter facilities is critical, but regrettably funding still remains wholly inadequate. A study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education last year found that Ohio charters spend an average of $785 per student annually for facilities—far above the $200 per pupil allotment provided to most charter schools. This allowance is even more insufficient in light of the $2,200 per student that districts spent on facilities in FY 2017. To make up for this shortfall, charters are often forced to dip into operational funds used to pay teacher salaries and instructional materials, and most rent classroom space rather than owning a traditional school building. In our 2016 charter survey, one leader spoke of the implications of working in such inadequate conditions: “The facilities do hinder us right now because there are things that our kids could be doing in science but we can’t get the lab.” Another charter leader mentioned having to use modular units—basically classroom trailers—instead of operating out of an actual building. And our former intern Michael Periatt conducted an analysis a few years ago that found most Columbus area charters locate in commercial properties, not in buildings specifically designed to educate children.

The building in which a school operates might not be the most important factor for student outcomes, but it does matter. Ohio policymakers should do more to assist fiscally and educationally sound brick-and-mortar charters secure suitable facilities. To do so, the state should consider the following:

• First, inject new money into the Community School Classroom Facility program, whose funds are likely to be spent down in the coming months. In doing so, they should set a funding amount above the original $25 million pool, allowing grantees to cover a greater portion of the construction and renovation costs. (Construction isn’t cheap—upwards of $10 million per school.) Legislators can bump up the CSCF amount either through the capital budget or next year’s operating budget.
• Second, loosen CSCF’s eligibility requirements so that more charter schools can apply for grants. As mentioned above, the program will soon award $8 million in grants—but the strict rules in the appropriating legislation permitted less than twenty schools and just a handful of non-district operators to apply.
• Third, in next spring’s operating budget, increase the per-student allocation from the current amount of $200 per brick-and-mortar charter pupil to an amount that more closely aligns with facility costs. Other states provide far more generous support, including upwards of $1,000 per pupil in Minnesota and California. Ohio should follow the lead of these less parsimonious states.

Too many responsible charter schools have had to scrape by with inadequate facilities. This is no longer a sustainable approach for Ohio. Charters’ ability to attract families or talented educators is hampered when their facilities lack educational, arts, or athletic amenities (much less “curbside appeal”). The lack of widespread building ownership among charter schools likely feeds a mistaken perception that they’re fly-by-night institutions. It continues to make Ohio an undesirable place for high-performing charter management organizations to locate. (Top-notch networks such as Achievement First, Uncommon Schools, or IDEA Public Schools don’t operate in Ohio.) Most troubling of all, scrimping on facilities cheats young people—many of whom come from less-advantaged families—of their opportunity to learn in a world-class environment.

In the proposed capital budget, legislators found it in their hearts to allot taxpayer dollars for stadiums, halls of fame, and barn restorations. Perhaps they can also find some money to ensure that Ohio’s 100,000 public charter school students spend eight hours a day, 180 days a year in suitable facilities.

1. In case you missed it, the House Bill that proposes to consolidate state oversight of pre-K, K-12, and workforce development into one agency had a hearing earlier this week. Fordham’s own Chad Aldis was on hand to provide testimony in support of the bill. (Columbus Dispatch, 3/7/18) Despite protestations to the contrary, I think the back of his head has never looked better than it does in those Dispatch photos. But if you insist on details of the testimony without PCA (Posterior Cranial Aldis) angles, Gongwer has got you covered. (Gongwer Ohio, 3/7/18)
    
2. In good news news, two high-performing charter schools in Columbus were among the recipients of state construction funds to expand their physical capacity and serve more kids announced yesterday. One of those Columbus schools – United Preparatory Academy – is sponsored by Fordham, as is Dayton Early College Academy, one of the non-Columbus awardees. Congratulations to everyone! (Columbus Dispatch, 3/8/18)
    
3. I always cringe at the phrase “in the wake of recent events,” because it seems like a sloppy sort of shorthand that assumes everyone reading it is not only fully conversant with which recent events you are talking about (many events happen every day outside of your own beat, reporters) but also—and more troubling—that it assumes that all readers share the same interpretation of those events. Therefore, whatever follows the phrase “in the wake of recent events” is assumed to do so logically and with the same logic for all readers. That’s why I prefer the wigglier phrase, “as you may recall”. But of course I am no Ohio University-educated ink-under-the-fingernails hard-bitten veteran reporter so what, ultimately, do I know about it? As you may recall, three members of Youngstown’s Academic Distress Commission have resigned in the last week or so and the district’s CEO is a finalist for a cushy supe gig (if I do say so myself) in a suburb of Denver. Which is actually quite some distance away from Youngstown. Quite logically, in the wake of those recent events (if I do say so myself), the Ohio Department of Education would like a closer look at the sitch up in Youngstown. (Youngstown Vindicator, 3/8/18) Meanwhile, Lorain City Schools has hired its Chief People Officer – a TFAer from Cleveland. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal, 3/8/18) Lorain’s CEO took some questions from the audience at a town hall meeting this week too. The headline is about charter schools, but there are also a few other interesting tidbits in there. (Elyria Chronicle, 3/8/18)
    
4. Finally today: What the frack?! The Rover Pipeline (‘memba that?) may provide an imminent windfall of cash for tiny Hillsdale Local Schools. They are ready to spend it on one or more new school buildings as soon as the Ohio Department of Taxation (‘memba them?) tells them how many zeroes they can count on in the final tally. (Richland Source, 3/8/18)

Editor's note: This post is a submission to Fordham's 2018 Wonkathon. We asked assorted education policy experts whether our graduation requirements need to change, in light of diploma scandals in D.C., Maryland, and elsewhere. Other entries can be found here.

What standards should students meet to graduate from high school? In the midst of graduation rate scandals and the ever-increasing population of high school graduates requiring remediation in college, it is no wonder that this question is a hot topic. Ensuing discussions typically revolve around things like the appropriate rigor of diploma requirements, high school graduation exams as proof of student achievement, and accountability changes that could be made to prevent schools from gaming the system. Are there tweaks that could be made to the existing system that could address some of the issues we are seeing today with high school graduation rates? Sure. But that only matters if we are convinced that our current system is worth saving, and as evidenced below, we aren’t sure that we have much (any?) data that says that is true (except the record-high national four-year cohort graduation rate, obviously).

So what is the purpose of high school in America? We think most agree that it is to train our students up to be responsible and productive citizens. But how exactly do we measure that? Research over the years has shown the numerous benefits of high school completion, how it improves the likelihood of higher wages and decreases the likelihood of being arrested for a crime, for example. This type of research led to a focus on graduation as the ultimate measurement. It’s as though we believed that something magical happened by simply pushing all students to get across the graduation stage in four years.

In turn, while the national graduation rate has soared to record highs from 2005 to 2015, the value of a high school diploma, as measured by median annual earnings, has taken a significant dip over that same time period. The value of the diploma has decreased, even as more students have crossed the stage. Would we say that 84.1 percent of our students, all those who graduated in 2016, are leaving high school prepared for successful lives? Ask ten people and we bet you won’t get a single “yes.” Therein lies the problem we are faced with today.

Where did we go wrong and how do we fix it? First, it’s important to change how we measure success. If we want high schools to ultimately turn out responsible and productive citizens and we agree that not every graduate in America today fits that criteria, then let’s not use graduation rate as our ultimate measure of success. Let’s instead measure the outcomes we wish to see after high school; things like employment rates, median annual wages, job satisfaction, and postsecondary educational program enrollment and completion rates. Are these metrics as easy to calculate and report out for every school and district as the four-year cohort graduation rate? No. Should that prevent us from doing it? No (but it often does).

With our focus firmly planted on student outcomes after high school, we can now begin to reimagine the experience itself. The solution—personalized learning, the educational buzz word that has every school across the nation attempting to better serve each student’s unique needs and goals. All the while the system in which these schools operate has continued its one-size-fits-all model. The right hand is saying, “Every child is unique, has different strengths and weakness and dreams, and should have ownership and agency over his/her learning,” yet the left hand is simultaneously shouting, “But don’t forget you need to ensure he/she masters every single rigorous standard, passes every standardized test, and graduates college-and-career ready in four years.” It’s time we take the hands and align the left with the right (and no, that isn’t a political joke).

To build a personalized learning model that effectively graduates students prepared to successfully contribute to society, let’s do three things:

• Embrace cross-curricular competency-based learning
• Personalize graduation paths
• Realign learning across the preschool to higher education/career continuum

Cross-curricular competency-based learning

Across the country at this very minute, there are thousands of students sitting in classes they could have aced on the very first day of school. An even larger population of students are being dragged along to more advanced concepts before they are ready simply because the teacher needs to cover all of the course objects in the allotted amount of days for the semester. Our current system based entirely on the accrual of seat time and credits in individual subject areas is incredibly outdated. Instead, our high school “graduation plan” should be a cross-curricular checklist of knowledge and skills that students should master in order to graduate. Education Reimagined is partnering with schools nationwide to make learner-centered education like this a reality. The beauty of this model is that it not only allows a student to advance at his/her own pace, but it opens up a wide range of pathways by which a student can demonstrate mastery, which leads us to our next recommendation.

Personalized graduation paths

It’s time we truly acknowledge that every student is unique and in turn provide fully personalized graduation paths. Career and technical education (CTE) and college preparation programs should be seen as equals, preparing students for the next step they choose to take. For example, if the graduation checklist requires students to be able to write a research paper, let’s give them an option to fulfill that in any course whether that is advanced English Literature or a welding course. A 2016 CTE study from the Fordham Institute shows many benefits to a quality CTE program, including an increased likelihood that the student will graduate from high school, enroll in a two-year college, and be employed with a higher wage after graduation. Every student should be given control to create a path toward graduation that uses his/her interests and future plans as a foundation upon which to add relevant coursework, internships, and life skills training. Indiana seems to be leading the way in this area with recently-approved Graduation Pathways.

Realignment across the learning continuum

Embracing the above two recommendations means a shift in American high schools as we know them. Knowing that, it is important that our last recommendation be to reimagine learning across the entire preschool to higher education/career continuum. Instead of moving students in primary grades with age cohorts, let’s focus on competency-based mastery. Give students who need extra time the time that they need to gain understanding and allow those who are ready to move on the chance to advance. Instead of labeling a student as a “failure” for not having graduated from high school in four years, set the expectation that students may master all of the competencies required in anywhere from three to seven years. Connect that high school graduation checklist with expectations of colleges, universities, career training programs, and jobs in order to ensure that when students do graduate they are truly prepared to embrace the next step, whatever that is for them.

So with three simple recommendations we have successfully turned the entire high school system on its head. We warned you in the title—we truly meant high school reimagined.

Editor's note: This post is a submission to Fordham's 2018 Wonkathon. We asked assorted education policy experts whether our graduation requirements need to change, in light of diploma scandals in D.C., Maryland, and elsewhere. Other entries can be found here.

School leaders across the country have systematically lowered graduation standards in order to boost graduation numbers (and their own reputations). So the question at the center of this Wonk-a-thon, “What are appropriate policy responses?” is certainly timely. It is not, however, the core question we should be asking ourselves. 

Policy is downstream of politics, politics is downstream of culture, and the culture of the education reform movement has been corrupted. If integrity at the core is not restored, policy “fixes” will merely tinker around the edges of the issue.

The technocratic education reform movement provides structural and social incentives for fraud. The central premise is that by empowering highly-trained central office leaders with world-class systems designed by preeminent experts, we ought to expect “transformative” change. The notion that sitting a bureaucrat trained by the Broad Academy in a chair could fundamentally change the life trajectories of thousands of deeply disadvantaged students within just a couple of years is, to put it mildly, willful wishful thinking. On the other hand, the systems, expectations, and professional incentives provide means and motive to commit fraud. In the rare event that reporters ferret out the fraud, technocratic wonks provide alibis rather than accountability.

Technocrats love to discuss the effects of incentives. For ambitious school administrators, the incentives all align to encourage lowering standards to produce higher statistics to gain applause and promotion. This will not stop until the risks outweigh the rewards. Those responsible for fraud ought not be celebrated as heroes, but instead have their records honestly exposed. 

Michelle Rhee claimed on her resume that after two-years of teaching, 90 percent of her students reached the 90th percentile in reading and math. That was not true. John Merrow uncovered documents suggesting that Rhee was “fully aware” of the scope of the cheating scandal under her watch. That stuff didn’t much matter: She still received money from foundations to promote her preferred policies nationwide and was recently considered as a candidate for secretary of education.

Antwan Wilson launched his career by taking the college acceptance rate of Denver’s Montbello High School from 35 to 95 percent. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it was the same stunt that the principal of D.C.’s Ballou High School pulled. All it takes to check the “college acceptance” box is having kids fill out an application to an open-enrollment institution. The paperwork gains were as fictional in Montbello as in Ballou: The year after Wilson left Montbello, 38 percent of seniors actually enrolled in college. Wilson’s resume boasts that as assistant superintendent in Denver, he oversaw “200 percent growth in AP enrollment.” According to state data, AP enrollment went from 5,154 to 7,993. That’s a respectable increase, but nowhere near 200 percent. Wilson’s resume boasts that he pioneered credit-recovery program, leading to higher graduation rates. There was also a major credit-recovery scandal under his watch, prefiguring what was to come.

Despite all this, Chiefs for Change ran a glowing Q&A with Wilson, titled “Education reform is tough. Antwan Wilson may have the answer.” It seems pretty safe to say that he does not. While there’s some poetic justice in seeing a high-flying career start and end with the same stunt, it seems almost unfair that Wilson bore the brunt of the damage for scandals started under his predecessor.

Perhaps the FBI investigation will tell us what Kaya Henderson knew and when she knew it. It wouldn’t be much better if she was truly clueless than if she knew and took credit anyway. We do know that Jason Kamras was tipped off about the discipline scandal. After apparently doing nothing to address it, he is now the superintendent of another major urban district. For her part, Henderson now sits as a superintendent in residence at The Broad Center, is a fellow at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and is a distinguished scholar in resident at Georgetown University.

The Washington Post talked to this year’s graduating class; they were deceived and are devastated. They are the victims of feckless leaders, enabled and awarded by the education reform establishment. A movement that started with the mantras “Kids before adults” and “no excuses for failure,” has put school administrators before students and seems content to stay silent in the face of fraud.

Why is it that “accountability”-minded technocratic reforms can’t practice what they preach?

Perhaps it has something to do with the sociological structure of the reform movement, which is largely defined by a series of circular, self-congratulatory confabulations. Reformers create hero narratives and invest their own social capital and status in the status of their supposed heroes. A threat to the reputation of “transformational” leaders is a threat to the reputation of the entire movement. It’s far easier to look the other way and keep doing the same old thing.

Hopefully, technocratic reformers will muster up the courage to call a spade a spade when one stares them straight in the face. If not, then the structural incentive for fraud and inflation will render policy tinkering little more than window dressing.

In the face of these headwinds, only a truly bold policy shift can restore systemic integrity: Make classes optional after tenth grade and grant diplomas to anyone whom a local employer certifies shows up steadily and performs adequately.  

In practice, policymakers already view a high school diploma as essentially a signal that a young adult can be employed. Policy should be centered on making sure that students can achieve that outcome, not making sure that adult policymakers can deny this goal to themselves.

This policy shift would also accomplish several salutary outcomes at once.

It would provide not-dishonest means for self-interested superintendents and politicians to post the graduation rate increases they want.

It would free up resources for additional investments in early education (which seems to be a more promising long-term strategy than forcing far-academically-behind seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds to stay sitting in rows of desks).

It would help schools provide better scaffolding and support for students who don’t intend to immediately attend college by freeing up resources for schools to provide those students with practical and professional support.

It would help students from deeply disadvantaged backgrounds provide for their loved ones, and in turn provide the kind of self-respect and confidence that only comes from providing.

It would also alleviate the pressure to “pass and promote,” which systematically undermines the emphasis and quality of schooling far before students near the end of high school.

Would it also have drawbacks? Surely. All policies have tradeoffs. But it seems like a more promising course than deflating the standards of the current system for the benefit of the adults around it at the expense of the students within it.

Editor's note: This post is a submission to Fordham's 2018 Wonkathon. We asked assorted education policy experts whether our graduation requirements need to change, in light of diploma scandals in D.C., Maryland, and elsewhere. Other entries can be found here.

It is a time to fundamentally reconsider what we think we know about high school graduates. But we should also revisit what the lack of a diploma tells us about non-graduates. Ultimately, we ought to expand our collective responsibility for both groups, get them to learn more, and invest in their development after they leave high school—with or without a diploma.

Most commentary focuses on the behavior of adult leaders and politicians. To the extent we talk about students, we focus on the future of those who earn diplomas and are cavalier about the consequences for those who do not.

Diplomas have predictive value to employers and higher education institutions; motivational value to students; and, for better or worse, cultural value that affects how we judge young people’s worth.

For employers and higher education institutions, a diploma can certify preparation and suitability. We should differentiate our understanding of preparation while de-coupling these certifications from the diploma. If we are going to invest more in young people who do not graduate, we should know as much about their preparation as we do about graduates.

For students, a diploma is intended to motivate attendance, good behavior, and all the work required to learn what is expected. For earlier generations a diploma was often a ticket to jobs that let young people support their families. The world has changed, undermining the likelihood of self-sufficiency for high school graduates, as well as the diploma’s motivational value.

Beyond motivational and predictive value, a diploma also has cultural value. Society’s judgements about personal responsibility are connected to our ideas about adulthood, and exiting high school serves as a proxy for adulthood.

As young people gain responsibility after high school, the paternalism of our public institutions decreases dramatically. When people leave high school, either as a dropout or a graduate, society lets out its collective breath, as if to say, “We did what we could. From here on out, it’s up to you.” This truth is explained to graduates in speeches at their graduation ceremony. Those who don’t graduate get the message more brutally. 

Graduates are encouraged to continue their development. Higher education, career training, and good jobs all involve some form of investment in participants. Graduates are more likely than dropouts to access these options and the accompanying investment. As a society, we should recognize our collective stake in the growth of all young people.

Clearly, too many people get a diploma who are not prepared for either work or further education. But our debates address this problem in isolation. Meanwhile, there are also people without a diploma who have knowledge or skills comparable to those who earned one. Admittedly, that is possible primarily because too many people in both groups are nowhere near prepared for what’s next.

In general, high school graduates are much more prepared than dropouts, but there have always been some graduates who got by with very low grades in classes with very low expectations. It doesn’t take much to get a D in many high school classes. The widespread lack of preparation for life is a bigger problem than our measurement failures; and our distaste for giving away something unearned should not lead us to abandon even more young people than we already do.

In research language, raising the standard for a diploma will prevent false positives. By strictly enforcing expectations, we will probably be more confident that every student with a diploma met the standard it implies.

But false negatives are also a problem. A false negative occurs when we declare something has not occurred, when in fact it has. Some students who fail to graduate may be able to perform at the level expected of graduates, especially if we remember how little we expect of graduates. If graduation reflects three things—mastery of content, the ability to follow-rules, and perseverance—we must guess which attribute tripped them up. Most efforts to raise standards give us confidence that no one gets a diploma who doesn’t “deserve it,” but these strategies may also increase false negatives.

To summarize the risk, if we do not differentiate in our certification of preparation outside diplomas, while we raise standards for attendance, there will be more people who do not enter the programs and services that support their continued growth even though they were prepared for the next stage.

Those suggesting we hold adults more accountable want to prevent people from gaming the system by handing out meaningless diplomas. But because a diploma doesn’t always mean much in the first place, and its absence is extremely harmful, I oppose reforms that sacrifice more kids to ensure we don’t give anything away. The personal consequences of not finishing high school are ultimately more important than determining whether some superintendent “cheated the system” to look good. Our solutions should remember that.

Editor's note: This post is a submission to Fordham's 2018 Wonkathon. We asked assorted education policy experts whether our graduation requirements need to change, in light of diploma scandals in D.C., Maryland, and elsewhere. Other entries can be found here.

Recently reported “scandals” surrounding graduation rates are a ripe opportunity to tackle a persistent problem in high schools across America. But the real scandal is the fact that a high school diploma—the tangible result of graduation—has become a bland assurance of young adults’ readiness to succeed in college and career.

What should “readiness” mean in 2018 in the United States? We know that 65 percent of jobs by the year 2020 will require a postsecondary credential (which could mean a bachelor’s degree, an associate degree, a series of industry recognized credentials, or technical college training tied to employment and wage earnings). And the most highly-valued credentials are attained at the postsecondary level.  Therefore, “readiness” in 2018 means readiness for college and career. Those who argue for alternate high school CTE pathways devoid of postsecondary instruction overlook both what employers need as well as the growing number of states, districts, and schools offering robust, industry-valued pathways aligned to middle- and higher-wage jobs. These rigorous pathways feature dual credit or AP courses as a requirement (not an option), industry-recognized certifications, and seamless transitions to postsecondary programs.

How do we currently represent readiness? For most students, graduation requirements represent a checklist of discrete course requirements that they must “pass” (C, D, or better) to earn a diploma. The problem is that the completion of these requirements does not guarantee that students master the skills and content that will open doors of opportunity to postsecondary and long-term career success. Furthermore, they provide no assurance that students engage in authentic experiences that provide the “soft skills” employers clamor for.

Instead, students endure instruction at a lock-step pace that produces a hodge-podge of incomplete content knowledge and skills. Issuing credits and diplomas based on seat-time and sometimes only barely passing grades continues to send false signals of readiness to students. 

As a core function of high schools’ structure, there are too few opportunities to address content and skill deficits, and too few opportunities to advance to more rigorous concepts and skills when ready. Under this approach, the goal of college and career readiness is at odds with the current structure and delivery of curricula in high school.

Improving the value of high school requires rethinking and changing the student experience. Here are three steps to doing just that:

1. Clearly establish what it means to be a high school graduate. States like South Carolina and Virginia are taking steps down this road with their “Portrait of a Graduate” initiatives. These portraits outline the skills, knowledge, and experiences students should master in high school. The value in the development of a Portrait of a Graduate is the involvement of and ultimate agreement about expectations among all key stakeholders, including higher education and the business community. States can take that a meaningful step further by identifying the most in-demand pathways to college and career in the state or region (see number two for more on this). Parents and students need to be able to connect, much earlier and more directly, critical expectations for graduates to the broader career options available to them in order to make high school relevant and purposeful to their interests and goals.
2. Develop robust, focused pathways of sequential courses and experiences that students can choose from when they enter high school. These could include STEM, liberal arts, and a range of industry-valued CTE options, among others. Some states like Texas have embraced this approach through “endorsements” (focused areas of study). But we can and must go further than revamping the checklist of courses required. Pathways must include experiences such as research projects, internships, and apprenticeships that connect students’ classroom learning with relevant real-world problems and workplace contexts. They must also be directly aligned to a range of postsecondary programs to ensure a seamless transition to credentialing beyond high school. Dual credit, AP courses, industry-recognized credentials, and computer science should be promoted non-negotiables of such pathways. (States can incentivize attainment of college credit, work-based learning experience, and credentials to spur this change.)
3. Transition from seat-time to mastery-based instruction. We must finally acknowledge that C’s and D’s are simply band-aids for incomplete learning. Making this transition means using assessments more strategically to understand where students fall on a continuum of learning—and then providing instruction and support to help them advance and master course content and skills. As others have noted, this may mean allowing additional time for some students to graduate. But ensuring those graduates have the support to reach a level of mastery with that additional time makes more sense than providing a five- or six-year window to simply “pass” and acquire the same lackluster diploma.

While these steps are not trivial, they are achievable. Indeed, many states that my organization, ExcelinEd, works with are already providing the flexibility for schools to focus on mastery-based instruction and the incentives to develop strong college and career pathways. Yes, there will likely need to be changes made to accountability systems and even graduation requirements themselves, but these changes should be made in concert with practical implementation of the steps above, not used as an excuse for inaction. With a few major steps, high school diplomas—and yes, graduation rates—could become serious metrics of long-term student success. The true scandal is that they aren’t—and won’t be until we do something about it.

This post is the second in a series of articles leading up to the release of new NAEP results on April 10. See the first post here. Future posts will examine state and local trends and identify the key questions that new NAEP scores will potentially answer.

The 2017 NAEP results will be released in April and will provide policymakers and analysts important data with which to track America’s academic progress or lack thereof.

To help us prepare, here’s a look at recent national trends, sliced and diced several different ways. In our view, the most helpful analyses:

1. Look at subgroup performance. If we examine national trends alone, we conflate changes in educational progress with fluctuations in the student population. As our schools serve greater numbers of Hispanic students and fewer whites, for example, we should expect achievement to decline somewhat because Hispanic students, who are more likely to live in poverty, tend to perform at lower levels, on average, than whites. Splitting out the trends for the major racial subgroups helps to overcome this problem.
2. Follow trends over a long period of time. Obsessing about gains or declines over a two-year period doesn’t tell us much. Long-term changes are more compelling and important.
3. Get beyond the averages. Average scale scores are important, no doubt, but we also need to pay attention to high and low achievers and how they are faring over time. We can do so by looking at trends at the 10th and 90th percentiles.

With these principles in mind, let’s see how U.S. students have performed over the past twenty-five years on the “regular” (versus “long term”) NAEP. That’s the one that will soon be updated with 2017 scores.

We relied on the NAEP Data Explorer to generate our charts, and we used NAEP’s national sample, which includes public and private schools. For subgroup data, we used NAEP’s “major reporting group” which, prior to 2002, was based on student-reported information. Since then, however, the Education Department uses school-reported data supplemented with student-reported data. And all of the trend lines are unbroken except for twelfth grade math, which introduced a new framework in 2005 that analyses found made comparisons with earlier results impossible.

Key findings:

• There have been gains almost across the board since the 1990s. But progress is generally much larger in math than in reading; in fourth grade than in eighth grade; in eighth grade than in twelfth grade; for African American and Hispanic students than for whites; and for low performers than for high performers.
• Most of the gains happened in the 1990s and early 2000s. The exception is reading, for which the 1990s were often flat, or even down. And progress in most categories has been very meager since the mid-2000s. Somewhere around 2007 or 2009, promising momentum petered out.
• Progress in math has been especially remarkable. Black eighth graders gained twenty-three points from 1990 to 2015, Hispanic students gained twenty-four, and white students gained twenty-two. That’s roughly equivalent to two grade levels, and means that students are coming into high school much better prepared than they were two decades ago. That may help to explain at least some of the increase in America’s graduation rate, though it hasn’t yet translated into much progress in twelfth grade math achievement.
• Children of color are reading much better in the early grades than before. Hispanic and black fourth graders students respectively gained twenty and twenty-one points from 1994 to 2015, while their white peers gained eight. As with the other trends, the most progress came in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Maybe it was because of improved reading instruction in the phonics/Reading First era, or maybe it reflected improved socioeconomic conditions for children of color in the 1990s. Either way, the gains for eighth graders were only half as large, and they all but evaporated by twelfth grade. In fact, there were marked declines for twelfth graders in the 10th percentile, perhaps because more low achievers were staying in school rather than dropping out.

Those are our takeaways. Scroll through the pictures below and see if you agree. And keep in mind that not every bump up or down is statistically significant.

Reading

1. Fourth grade reading, white students, 1992–2015

2. Fourth grade reading, Hispanic students, 1992–2015

3. Fourth grade reading, black students, 1992–2015

4. Fourth grade reading, 10th percentile, 1992–2015

5. Fourth grade reading, 90th percentile, 1992–2015

6. Eighth grade reading, white students, 1992–2015

7. Eighth grade reading, Hispanic students, 1992–2015

8. Eighth grade reading, black students, 1992–2015

9. Eighth grade reading, 10th percentile, 1992–2015

10. Eighth grade reading, 90th percentile, 1992–2015

11. Twelfth grade reading, white students, 1992–2015

12. Twelfth grade reading, Hispanic students, 1992–2015

13. Twelfth grade reading, black students, 1992–2015

14. Twelfth grade reading, 10th percentile, 1992–2015

15. Twelfth grade reading, 90th percentile, 1992–2015

Math

16. Fourth grade math, white students, 1990–2015

18. Fourth grade math, black students, 1990–2015

19. Fourth grade math, 10th percentile, 1990–2015

20. Fourth grade math, 90th percentile, 1990–2015

21. Eighth grade math, white students, 1990–2015

22. Eighth grade math, Hispanic students, 1990–2015

23. Eighth grade math, black students, 1990–2015

24. Eighth grade math, 10th percentile, 1990–2015

25. Eighth grade math, 90th percentile, 1990–2015

26. Twelfth grade math, white students, 1990–2015

27. Twelfth grade math, Hispanic students, 1990–2015

28. Twelfth grade math, black students, 1990–2015

29. Twelfth grade math, 10th percentile, 1990–2015

30. Twelfth grade math, 90th percentile, 1990-2015