I happen to own the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, pictured here. It’s lovely in itself, has beautiful views of downtown and the outer harbor, and rakes in more than $11 million in tolls each year. But I’m willing to sell it to you, cheap!

If you believe that I own a bridge in Baltimore, then let me try out an even more fantastic idea on you. Since 1992, the achievement of America’s twelfth graders on NAEP reading and math tests has been unchanged. Yet high school graduation rates have been soaring. From 2006 to 2016, U.S. graduation rates have increased from 73 percent to 84 percent, an all-time record. Does this sound plausible to you?

Recently, the Washington Post reported a scandal about graduation rates at Ballou High School in Washington, D.C., a high-poverty school not known (in the past) for its graduation rates. In 2017, 86 percent of Ballou seniors graduated, and 100 percent were accepted into college. An investigation by radio station WAMU, however, found that a large proportion of the graduating seniors had very poor attendance, poor achievement, and other problems. In fact, the Post reported that one third of all graduating seniors in D.C. high schools did not meet district graduation standards. Ballou’s principal and the city’s Director of Secondary Schools resigned, and there are ongoing investigations. The FBI has recently gotten involved.

In response to these stories, teachers across America wrote to express their views. Almost without exception, the teachers said that the situation in their districts is similar to that in D.C. They said they are pressured, even threatened, to promote and then graduate every student possible. Students who fail courses are often offered “credit recovery” programs to obtain their needed credits, and these were found in an investigation by the Los Angeles Times to have extremely low standards. Failing students may also be allowed to do projects or otherwise show their knowledge in alternative ways, but these are derided as “Mickey Mouse.” And then there are students like some of those at Ballou who did not even bother to show up for credit recovery or Mickey Mouse, but were graduated anyway.

The point is it’s not just Ballou. It’s not just D.C. In high-poverty districts coast to coast, standards for graduation have declined. My colleague Bob Balfanz coined the term “dropout factories” many years ago to describe high schools, almost always serving high-poverty areas, that produced a high proportion of all dropouts nationwide. In response, our education system got right to work on what it does best: change the numbers to make the problem appear to go away. The FBI might make an example of D.C., but if the city is in fact doing what many high-poverty districts are doing throughout the country, is it fair to punish it disproportionately? It’s not up to me to judge the legalities or ethics involved, but clearly the problem is much, much bigger.

Some people have argued with me on this issue. “Where’s the harm,” they ask, “in letting students graduate? So many of these students encounter serious barriers to educational success. Why not give them a break?”

I will admit to a sympathy for giving high school students who just barely miss standards legitimate opportunities to graduate, such as taking appropriately demanding makeup courses. But what is happening in D.C. and elsewhere is very far from this reasonable compromise with reality.

I have done some research in inner-city high schools. In just about every class, there are students who are actively engaged in lessons, and others who would become actively engaged if their teachers used proven programs (in my case it was cooperative learning). But even with the best programs, there were kids in the back of the class with headphones on who were totally disengaged, no matter what the teacher did. And those were the ones who actually showed up at all.

The kids who were engaged, or became engaged because of excellent instruction, should have a path to graduation, one way or another. The rest should have every opportunity, encouragement, and assistance to reach this goal. Some will choose to take advantage, some will not, but that must be their choice, with appropriate consequences.

Making graduation too easy not only undermines the motivations of students (and teachers). It also undermines the motivation of the entire system to introduce and effectively implement effective programs, from preschool to twelfth grade. If educators can keep doing what they’ve always done, knowing that numbers will be fiddled with at the end to make everything come out all right, then the whole system can and will lose a major institutional incentive for improvement.

The high dropout rate of inner-city schools is indeed a crisis. It needs to be treated as such—not a crisis of numbers, but a crisis encountered by hundreds of thousands of vulnerable, valuable students. Loosening standards and then declaring success, which every educator knows to be false, corrupts the system, undermining confidence in the numbers even when they are legitimate. It fosters cynicism that nothing can be done.

Is it too much to expect that we can create and implement effective strategies that would enable virtually all students to succeed on appropriate standards in elementary, middle, and high school, so that virtually all can meet rigorous requirements and walk across a stage, head held high, knowing that they truly attained what a high school diploma is supposed to certify?

If you agree that high school graduation standards have gone off the rails, it is not enough to demand tougher standards. You also have to advocate and work for the application of proven approaches to make deserved and meaningful graduation accessible to all.

On the other hand, if you think the graduation rate has legitimately skyrocketed in the absence of any corresponding improvement in reading or math achievement, please contact me at www.buy-my-bridge.com. It really is a lovely bridge.

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

This blog was developed with support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Foundation.

Editor’s note: This article was first published on Robert Slavin’s blog.

For the past year and a half, I’ve been honored to represent the State Board of Education on the Maryland Commission on Innovation & Excellence in Education, which released its preliminary report this week. Much heavy lifting lies ahead as Commission members work with staff and consultants to put flesh on the bones of our broad policy recommendations and to cost them out.

The Commission has been brilliantly led by former University of Maryland chancellor William (Brit) Kirwan, ably staffed by the state’s Department of Legislative Services, and informed and inspired by its consultants at the National Center on Education and the Economy. But it’s also been constrained in the ways that any gathering of “stakeholders” is, i.e., by the turf-protecting and interest-advancing of groups with huge stakes in the current system. Hence it has oscillated between truly bold ideas for how K–12 education in Maryland should change and defensive angst over the real-world implications of those changes for districts, school boards, administrators, teachers, taxpayers, and more.

Chairman Kirwan has grappled with this dilemma with finesse, humor, humility, and diplomacy, but there’s no avoiding the fact that our preliminary report contains both important accomplishments and worrisome weaknesses. And there’s no way of knowing at this point how successfully we will be able to capitalize on the former and overcome the latter as we work toward a final set of recommendations.

On the plus side:

• This report does an exemplary job of identifying the weaknesses of Maryland’s current K–12 education system and the reasons that it needs to change. Considering how smugly complacent—and self-deluding—state leaders have been for many years now regarding the actual performance of that system, simply painting an accurate picture is a major achievement. If you don’t read anything else in the preliminary report, read Chapter I, “ A Call to Action.” It might fairly be retitled “A State at Risk.”
• The report points to half a dozen fundamental changes that, if actually made, would reboot Maryland education and give our state a real shot at producing results for itself and opportunities for its young people that are competitive with the most successful states and countries. These are summarized in the “9 building blocks” on page 19. Every one of them is worth doing—and every one of them represents a major change in how Maryland does things. Because they integrate and harmonize in myriad ways, they also need each other if the new structure they describe to is to be sturdy and durable.

All good. Very good. But unfortunately that’s not the whole story. What commissions like this are good at is reaching agreement at a high level of generality and aspiration, not at making tough decisions, upsetting apple carts, or forcing tradeoffs.

On the minus side:

• Taken as a whole, our recommendations would add many billions to the cost of K–12 education in Maryland (and would also create some ancillary costs). The state already faces a structural budget deficit—and the new federal tax law is going to be hard on many Maryland taxpayers. Absent a huge increase in state (and perhaps local) taxes, doing what the Commission recommends means making profound tradeoffs that the Commission has thus far been unwilling to consider. (Yes, there’s vague talk in the report about “reallocating” some current dollars, but we’ve shown no stomach—remember, most Commissioners have interests to protect—for doing less of anything.)
• We are equally vague about any “enforcement” mechanism to compel faithful implementation of the Commission’s recommendations throughout the state. We have not been able to agree to any changes in governance, structures, or power relationships.
• While I don’t expect the majority of a commission like this to agree with me on structural changes that in my view would benefit the state and its children, I must point out that among the governance structures undisturbed by our recommendations is Maryland’s top-down, district-based control of K–12 education, an arrangement that disempowers parents, punishes schools of choice, creates inequity between counties, and confines the principals of district schools to administrative matters rather than functioning as true executives.

As the Commission now tries to move from the lofty directional nature of our preliminary report to something truly actionable by the state, perhaps we’ll be able to capitalize on our pluses and overcome the minuses. Of course I hope so. But even if we do, even if our final report is a flawless blueprint for a world-class (and affordable) education system, going from “actionable” to “action” will prove a very heavy lift. Overhauling anything as large, complex, and entrenched as a state’s primary-secondary education system requires inspired and sustained political leadership—bipartisan leadership that transcends elections, defies vested interests, overturns the necessary apple carts, and always puts what’s good for kids ahead of what pleases adults. So far, sadly, I haven’t seen that in Maryland. Perhaps that, too, will change. Perhaps.

1. As reported in Bites on Wednesday, a proposal has been put forward in the General Assembly that would make some important changes to the state-level governance structure of K-12 education, higher ed, and workforce development. Here is some additional coverage of the initial announcement. Chad Aldis is quoted in both of these pieces as being in favor of the proposal. The Dayton Daily News does not appear to share his sentiment. (Dayton Daily News, 2/14/18) Gongwer, as usual, is thorough and efficient in their even-handed coverage. (Gongwer Ohio, 2/14/18)
    
2. Here is coverage of same from outlets who did not feel the need to include Chad. Wonder why? Most curious of all is this revised version of the original Dispatch piece which initially included Chad but now does not. How very odd. (Columbus Dispatch, 2/15/18) Next up, the Blade. Not fans of the proposal, if I am reading this correctly. (Toledo Blade, 2/14/18) The PD’s follow up piece reads like a potted history of proposals to change state level K-12 governance, pretty well ignoring all of the other changes in the proposal. I detect a less-than-enthusiastic response here. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 2/15/18) No maybe about it in Akron. Just straight-up loathing from Doug and co. (Akron Beacon Journal, 2/14/18) Despite talk of “understanding” the pros/cons of the proposal and a promise of “thorough and deliberative discussion” when said proposal makes it from the House to the Senate, Gongwer has determined that key Senators’ dislike for the proposal is the headline. (Gongwer Ohio, 2/15/18) Unless I’m misreading it, most of the disdain for the proposal is focused on changes to the State Board of Education and, to a lesser extent, to the Ohio Department of Education. Glad, then, to see that someone at the D is looking a bit deeper. To wit: the Ohio Board of Regents, once in charge of higher ed policymaking in the state, is down to just two members with no new ones on the horizon. They don’t have a quorum and haven’t met in quite a while. Whether this state of affairs is some plot (insinuated by some) or simply the inevitable result of changes to higher ed governance instituted ten years ago (my vote; but seriously what do I know?), it seems important to the discussion taking place around the new proposal to merge K-12, higher ed, and workforce development efforts. Glad to see someone taking an interest in the larger aspects of the proposal. Thanks, Jennifer Smola. I appreciate you, for what it’s worth. (Columbus Dispatch, 2/16/18)
    
3. Our title quote for today’s Bites comes from this irony-laden story about Cuyahoga Falls City Schools’ travails in regard to sponsoring a dropout recovery charter school, not that I expect anyone involved was actually aiming for irony. Honestly, are we sure that this story didn’t get mixed up with the transcript of the ECOT hearing earlier this week? (MyTownNEO, 2/16/18)
    
4. Finally today: what seems to me like huge news from the Youngstown branch of the NAACP. I will let branch vice president Jimma McWilson tell you of the crucial change the organization is making in its quarterly report cards on Youngstown City Schools: “The reviews are no longer about the CEO, but about the instructional system he has in place.” The first of these new reviews appears to include some encouraging trends. (Youngstown Vindicator, 2/16/18)

Non-cognitive skills are an increasingly popular topic in education. These include capabilities like perseverance, grit, self-efficacy, work ethic, and conscientiousness. Research shows that possessing them can affect both scholastic and life outcomes.

Their popularity and apparent effectiveness have led to calls on schools to pay more attention to these non-cognitive factors. These calls were answered in part by ESSA, which requires states to have an indicator of “school quality or student success” that goes beyond state standardized test scores and graduation rates. Sometimes referred to as the “nonacademic indicator,” the inclusion of this measure in federal requirements opened the door for schools to focus, at least in part, on non-cognitive skills. California’s CORE districts, for example, use a social-emotional learning metric that measures four non-cognitive competencies with student surveys.

But incorporating non-cognitive skills into schools is still quite difficult. Paul Tough, author of the widely-cited How Children Succeed, explained why in a 2016 Atlantic article:     

But here’s the problem: For all our talk about noncognitive skills, nobody has yet found a reliable way to teach kids to be grittier or more resilient. And it has become clear, at the same time, that the educators who are best able to engender noncognitive abilities in their students often do so without really “teaching” these capacities the way one might teach math or reading—indeed, they often do so without ever saying a word about them in the classroom. This paradox has raised a pressing question for a new generation of researchers: Is the teaching paradigm the right one to use when it comes to helping young people develop noncognitive capacities?     

Tough raises an important issue: If we know these skills matter, both in terms of academic achievement and long-term outcomes, then we have a responsibility to make sure that students graduate with a firm grasp of them. But if we don’t know how to teach the capacities effectively, what are we supposed to do?

When I taught high school English, my students and I discussed non-cognitive skills all the time—Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet should have practiced more self-control, Dr. King’s speeches and letters are a great example of self-efficacy and perseverance, and The Cask of Amontillado is a fascinating (albeit disturbing) look at the interplay between a conscientious character and a careless one. But similar to what Tough implied in the Atlantic, I often wondered if my classroom was the best place for students to actually practice these skills. That’s not to say it was impossible; I’m sure a few students improved their teamwork skills during group projects, or their grittiness during our seemingly endless trek through research papers. But overall, a traditional classroom with rows of desks and textbooks and a smart board might not have been the best place for them to exercise their non-cognitive muscles.

But what about non-traditional classroom spaces? Take for instance career and technical education (CTE), which integrates traditional academic subjects with technical, job-specific skills. These programs are typically designed to follow both a state’s academic standards and technical content standards that align to a chosen field and allow for hands-on training and real work experience. So, for CTE students, school isn’t just about the three R’s. It might also involve performing blood tests, interning with a pediatric physical therapy team, working on utility restoration and workplace improvement projects at places like GM, participating in mock trials, or even designing animation and software. Each of these programs puts students into real-world situations that demand the development and use of non-cognitive skills.

These are not the  “vo-tech” programs of yesteryear, into which academically struggling students were shoved because their teachers didn’t know what to do with them. Today’s CTE helps students earn associate and bachelor’s degrees and industry-recognized credentials that will place them in good-paying jobs—and they value learning through doing and the development of soft skills, not just the imparting of academic knowledge.

Unfortunately, despite all the research on the positive effects of career and technical education, there seems to be little analysis of whether specific programs cultivate non-cognitive capacities. That’s something that should be remedied soon.

But resources like the Ohio Department of Education’s CTE success stories page show CTE’s potential in this regard. The student profiles therein evince the mastery of hard, cognitive skills: cardiopulmonary resuscitation and emergency patient care, sous-vide cooking, and expertise in automotive technology, to name a few. But the stories also show students developing non-cognitive abilities that all children need—grit and self-control, leadership and interpersonal communication skills.

As education stakeholders continue to mull over the best way to teach students non-cognitive skills, offering CTE to more students is an evidence-backed, bipartisan solution that already exists to some degree in the vast majority of states. More rigorous research is needed, but the blend of academic and technical material within these programs offers a great opportunity to teach today’s students cognitive and non-cognitive skills in real-world environments.

1. The State Board of Education met this week and, among other things, members got an update on the graduation readiness of the Class of 2018. It seems that 77 percent of this year’s seniors are on track to graduate using the more difficult requirements which are going fully into effect this year. There are approximately five months left of the school year and, of course, lots of less rigorous diploma pathways for those remaining students to utilize thanks to the enormous sympathies of the board and the state legislature. There is no data yet on how many of the remaining students might utilize those other pathways. (Columbus Dispatch, 2/13/18). Speaking of the state board, a new bill previewed this morning would seriously curtail its authority, along with combining K-12, higher ed, and workforce development authorities of the state into one cabinet-level department. Czar-riffic! Our own Chad Aldis is quoted on the proposal in this first-out-of-the-gate piece from Patrick O’Donnell. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 2/14/18) Chad is also quoted in the D on the proposal, sure to garner lots of attention for the foreseeable future. (Columbus Dispatch, 2/14/18)
    
2. Sticking with the state board for a moment: Board members voted unanimously this week to deny an appeal by Cincinnati City Schools and to revoke its ability to sponsor charter schools due to a poor evaluation rating. The fate of its schools will be determined between now and the end of the school year and hinges on whether or not they can find new sponsors. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 2/13/18) On a related note, Dayton Business Technology High School, a dropout recovery charter school sponsored by Dayton City Schools, this week requested an extension of the school board’s decision to terminate their charter. Dayton Tech’s recent report card was a mixed bag but it seems to have some important supporters in the community. Will that be enough to save it from the charter ax? The board is considering the request. (Dayton Daily News, 2/13/18)
    
3. The case of the people (and I mean ALL of the people) vs. ECOT was heard in the Ohio Supreme Court yesterday. Absurdities abounded. (Columbus Dispatch, 3/13/18)
    
4. The extent of CEO David Hardy’s school calendar changes for 2018-19 are now clear for folks in Lorain. The year starts earlier for staff and students, the first semester ends before winter break, and the year ends well before Memorial Day when those titular fish are in the non-proverbial lake. Wait; is this Lorain or Mayberry? (Northern Ohio Morning Journal, 2/13/18) Hardy also outlined the new non-chief positions he wants to fill to complete his administrative team. These include the “turnaround principal” (tasked with improving the relationship between students and teachers; no small task, I’m sure), and the “dean of academic outcomes”. NOW it sounds more like Lorain. (Elyria Chronicle, 2/14/18)
    
5. We’ll call this the analog version of the app that Fordham boss Mike Petrilli would love to build: Report card conferences between students and adults in the community who give the students a look at how their academic progress has prepared them for the next step after high school. The idea is to show them how to get on and stay on track toward college, military, or a career. Nice. (ThisWeek News, 2/12/18) And finally today, a related good news story. Ten years ago, two coworkers at First Energy Corporation in Akron tutored a young student as part of the company’s volunteer program. Today, that former student is working at First Energy and has reconnected with her very proud former tutors. (Akron Beacon Journal, 2/12/18)

Recent stories have cast doubt on the stratospheric graduation rates reported in myriad states, including accounts in Alabama, California, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, Texas—and of course Washington, D.C., where one-third of recently awarded diplomas are reportedly attributable to educators violating district policies related to pupil absences and credit recovery.

These are just the scandals we know about. “This is sad and infuriating and, as local education reporters across the country know, not at all uncommon,” tweeted Erica L. Green, an education reporter at the New York Times, when the D.C. scandal broke. Green used to cover education for the Baltimore Sun. And what we need today is for more folks on more school beats to investigate whether similar malfeasance is occurring in their districts and states—because such behavior is almost certainly more widespread than has yet seen the light of day.

If it is, we must identify causes and propose solutions. The issue is not measurement and accountability writ large, as our friends Lindsey Burke and Max Eden proposed recently. People cheat on Wall Street too, but that doesn’t mean companies should stop reporting quarterly earnings or that the SEC should stop checking on them.

Instead, the most obvious culprits are utopian graduation rate targets that have pushed some educators to do the unthinkable. That is, the problem isn’t reporting graduation rates and using them as part of an accountability system; it’s setting goals for them that can’t possibly be achieved. We should set more realistic targets that take into account the achievement level of students when they enter ninth grade.

But there’s likely also a more important and foundational cause: Education policy’s utter confusion and division about the appropriate purpose of high school has led to the default, aspirational view is that it’s meant to prepare every child for college. That view is mistaken, however, in part because it’s at odds with students’ interests and the skills necessary for most American jobs. If this is the cause, then the reasons for America’s graduation rate malfeasance is systemic and an overhaul is in order.

In D.C., a recent audit and investigation of the district’s scandal concluded that “Teachers and school leaders are subject to a variety of institutional and administrative pressures which have contributed to a culture in which passing and graduating students is expected.” These pressures included, among other things, aggressive graduation goals and empathy for the needs of the city’s many disadvantaged students, who tend to enter high school at lower levels of achievement than their more advantaged peers.

In other words, the auditors found two major forces that led D.C. teachers and principals to fudge their figures: incentives to hand out more diplomas and concern about the disadvantages faced by low-income and minority students and their effect on academic achievement.

Those forces are have been ubiquitous across America for at least a decade. In 2008, new rules from the U.S. Department of Education sought to fix the country’s diploma problem. On documents that states submitted to the agency for approval, each thereafter had to set a single long-term graduation rate goal for all its high schools, as well as annual goals that ensure progress toward that target. States also had to include on state and local report cards aggregate graduation rates and rates for subgroups.

The Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 ratified these requirements in statute. States must hold their schools accountable for academic outcomes. For high schools, graduation rates are a mandatory metric for this purpose, along with English language learner proficiency and math, reading, and science achievement. States must also set ambitious long-term goals and publicly report their results.

School officials therefore remain under significant, even heightened, pressure to hand out more diplomas to more students, which can be achieved through several means. One is to boost students’ actual performance so that more of them meet rigorous graduation standards. Another is to lower or alter standards. Yet another is simply to ignore standards altogether and confer diplomas on young people who haven’t earned them.

We haven’t seen a whole lot of the first. As my colleague Robert Pondiscio aptly observed in 2016 when he called graduation rates “the phoniest statistic in education,” the then-record-high rate of 82 percent (today it’s 84 percent!) seemed distressingly divorced from increases in achievement: “There has been no equally dramatic spike in SAT scores. Don’t look for a parallel uptick on seventeen-year-old NAEP, better performance on AP tests, or the ACT, either. You won’t find it.”

Yet policymakers are falling all over each other to change, and often lower, standards. In Fordham’s home state of Ohio, for instance, officials have backed off plans to require that graduates pass rigorous end-of-course exams. They worried that too few students would meet those expectations, so they developed various workarounds for the class of 2018. Students can earn a diploma by, for example, attending school regularly and completing a sufficient amount of community service. Now the state board of education wants to extend those same lower expectations through at least 2020.

Even worse are schools that simply ignore graduation standards or fudge their data. In addition to the 937 students to whom D.C. officials improperly granted diplomas in 2017, a recent audit undertaken in neighboring Prince George's County, Maryland, found that as many as a quarter of that district's 2016 and 2017 high school graduates may not have met requirements. A year earlier, five veteran educators in El Paso were indicted on federal charges in connection to, as an FBI agent said, “criminal conduct and brazen efforts to manipulate testing populations, graduation rates, and attendance figures”; three have since pleaded guilty to related charges and agreed to cooperate in the trials of the other two.

All of this is exacerbated by America’s lackluster achievement among students entering high school. Nationally, almost one-third of eighth graders are below the basic level of achievement in math on the National Assessment of Education Progress, as of 2016. And basic is a low bar; proficient is the one they’re supposed to clear. Seventy-three percent of students fall short of basic in Detroit; 60 percent in Cleveland; 59 percent in Baltimore; 49 percent in Atlanta and Washington, D.C.; 48 percent in Los Angeles; and 47 percent in Philadelphia. Similarly low rates exist for disadvantaged eighth graders nationwide: 42 percent of those eligible for free or reduced priced lunch are below basic in math, and that number is 52 percent and 40 percent for black and Hispanic students, respectively. The trends in reading are comparable.

So it’s scarcely surprising that states, districts, and individual schools—faced with strong pressure to graduate more students, yet awash in entering freshman who can scarcely read and cipher—would finagle their diploma metrics. That isn’t to excuse that behavior, but to understand it. For only when those of us in education policy and practice understand it can we widely recognize our refusal to address the aforementioned real issue: The current implied purpose of American high school—getting more students to and through college—is mistaken and is causing more harm and havoc than harmony and good.

But this also requires that we understand the true magnitude of America’s graduation rate inflation. Our current, hugely problematic approach to this metric is baked into ESSA and the fifty state plans the law obligated, so lawmakers won’t overhaul high schools without overwhelming evidence that today’s approach is inherently flawed. Only then will policymakers and parents be able to decide what kinds of secondary schools today’s adolescents should be able to attend—and what that means for holding such schools accountable and for what their students must accomplish to earn diplomas, and not merely be handed them. Local reporters can help. By all indications, the consequences of these innate defects are bound to be widespread and severe.

The Chicago Public School district (CPS) has been in education news many times over the years, and not typically for its successes. Yet a recent report produced jointly by the Joyce and Spencer Foundations claims that, far from being a poster child for dysfunction, the district is helping students make gains that are among the fastest in the nation. The report presents data and outcomes from a November 2017 conference hosted by the two foundations, in which civic and educational leaders in Chicago met to explore research on the city’s progress, identify possible drivers of the improvement, and reflect on next steps for the district.

The report’s authors primarily rely on a Stanford University study by Sean Reardon as proof of CPS’s progress. The research examines growth of Chicago scores on state tests from 2009 to 2014. Comparing the yearly gains of students in CPS to the two thousand largest districts in the country, Reardon found that CPS elementary school students grew faster than those in most other districts and states. On average, Chicago students achieved six years of growth during the five years between third and eighth grade; the black-white achievement gap held steady because the two groups grew at the same rate; and the Hispanic-white achievement gap narrowed because Hispanic students actually improved faster than their white peers.

Chicago is therefore producing growth, but it’s not clear how. With numerous projects, partnerships, and reforms in play, the report’s authors were not able to identify exactly which programs, policies, or inputs caused the gains. But the report outlines some possible causes that experts and stakeholders discussed at the November conference.

One is the district’s partnership with the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. The Consortium studies policy changes in CPS and provides frequent feedback, which the district uses to adapt practice. For example, the district’s “Freshman On-Track” indicator, a system to help ninth-graders meet core metrics of standards in attendance, grades, and behavior, is based on Consortium research. Other potential causes for Chicago’s gains are CPS’s efforts to prepare and support new and experienced principals, improve teaching quality through a new evaluation system and stronger curriculum and standards, and train principals and teachers to be stronger users of data on the school level. Additionally, CPS works with a number of outside organizations, including the Chicago Public Education Fund, Network for College Success, and the Academy for Urban School Leadership, whose support might contribute to its progress.

One potential issue, however, is that the report frames the Chicago story rather rosily. It tends to emphasize gains while glossing over the current levels of Chicago’s achievement, like the fact that only 18 percent of CPS ninth-graders in 2016 are expected to earn a BA within ten years of beginning high school (a number which, encouragingly, is up 7 percentage points from 2006). The district also continues to experience conflict over the role of charters, the closing of community schools, and budget issues.

Still, the report is aptly named “Progress and Promise.” Chicago has not discovered an educational panacea; its test scores are not suddenly top in the nation. There is no one magic program or factor to which CPS’s gains can be attributed. In fact, perhaps the takeaway from the report is just that. Investment in personnel quality, consistent use of data and research, and involvement of numerous stakeholders and partnerships are all part of the narrative, as are the effort of countless individuals and decades of struggling for reform. CPS still has a tall mountain to climb, but it seems to have gotten a foothold.

SOURCE: Maureen Kelleher, “Progress And Promise: Chicago’s Nation-Leading Educational Gains,” Joyce Foundation and Spencer Foundation (January 2018).

Today, Representative Bill Reineke (R-Tiffin) announced that he’ll be introducing legislation to significantly change the way Ohio governs public schools. The proposal calls for the creation of the Ohio Department of Learning and Achievement, which will focus on aligning Ohio’s education system to better prepare the workforce of tomorrow. The new agency will absorb the Governor’s Office of Workforce Transformation and most of the responsibilities of both the Ohio Department of Education and the Ohio Department of Higher Education. The leader of the Department of Learning and Achievement would be a cabinet-level official and appointed by the governor.

“While the most important part of education happens every day in classrooms across Ohio, state leaders bear the responsibility of providing support and clear guidance to assist school districts in implementing education law,” said Chad L. Aldis, vice president for Ohio policy and advocacy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. “By creating an agency under the direct oversight of the governor, the legislature would ensure that governors are unambiguously responsible—and accountable to the people—for executing Ohio education laws.”

The soon to be introduced legislation shifts the focus of the state board of education away from its current role, which is to create administrative rules and implement laws passed by the legislature, and to a narrower scope focused primarily on educator licensure. Their role would be similar to the various state licensing boards that focus on professional standards.

“The introduction of this legislation well before the general election shows that the House is serious about holding the governor accountable for educational progress, whoever he or she may be,” Aldis added. “As gubernatorial candidates talk about their visions for education, these changes would ensure that our next governor will truly have the ability to shape the direction of education and should result in more coherent policies and greater continuity.”

The selective outrage of partisan ideologues in the education space is a well-known phenomenon and nowhere is that more on display than in the muted reaction to the scandal surrounding the 2017 graduation rate that has been unraveling in Washington in recent weeks. With the release of the final report of the audit ordered by the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, we know, unequivocally, that more than one-third of the Washington public schools’ class of 2017—a total of nine-hundred students—were only granted diplomas because their teachers and administrators flouted attendance policies and misused credit-recovery programs.

One would think that the loudest accountability hawks in the education reform movement would be beside themselves, writing op-eds, and taking the battle to Twitter in the name of justice for students. But as the details of the graduation-rate investigation by NPR and Washington’s local public radio station (WAMU) have emerged, these avatars of accountability have been uncharacteristically silent. The very same folks who are quick to jump on the slightest whisper of wrongdoing in virtual charters and voucher programs, for example, have suddenly lost their aversion to dishonesty and fraud. When the reforms they support are carried out by people they like and align with politically, their commitment to accountability appears to soften. And maybe that would be understandable, except that students and families suffer when silence settles over a deliberate and well-orchestrated injustice inside a school system.

While the Center for American Progress, for example, was relentless on the issue of accountability in their opposition to Betsy DeVos’ nomination for Secretary of Education, they have had virtually nothing to say about what we now know happened with the class of 2017 in Washington’s public schools. And even former Secretary Arne Duncan who is reliably vocal on issues of truth and accountability, has been quiet on this.

When students miss more than ninety days of school and still graduate on time, silence is not an option. When credit-recovery courses are abused, silence is not an option. And when emails reveal that knowledge of the problem had made its way all the way to the chancellor’s office but no action was taken, silence is not an option.

Calling out Washington’s fraudulent graduation rate would damage the reform narrative. The nation’s capital has been hailed as proof that reform can work to turn around a big city system and increase its graduation rate. And for a time, that seemed to be true. So where are those same cries of an educational “wild west” that we heard nonstop during the lead up to Betsy DeVos’ confirmation hearing? If phony diplomas, undocumented suspensions, and credit-recovery abuse don’t conjure up images of a wild west, it’s hard to imagine anything that would.

All credibility flies right out the window when we pound our fists, lash out on Twitter, and demand a certain level of standards of one group only to then hold our friends and allies to a lower and more convenient standard. The situation in Washington is unconscionable and Chancellor Antwan Wilson, although admittedly little more than a year into the role, should have said so right from the start. He should have owned it and vowed to correct it. He didn’t.

And troubling patterns like the one in the city are beginning to emerge in other states across the country. Wilson’s response could likely serve as a model for other state and city leaders of what not to do when the wheels come off a fake—or greatly exaggerated—story of success.

WAMU’s Kate McGee reports that “since publishing our initial investigation, we have found this story playing out in schools across the country. We have heard from teachers in Vermont, West Virginia, Illinois, Maryland, South Carolina, Massachusetts, New York, Wyoming, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. It’s clear that schools everywhere are promoting and graduating underprepared and chronically absent students by pressuring teachers and using shortcuts.”

This should be a clarion call to school boards across the country to ask tough questions about their districts’ own graduation rates and how they’re achieved. A sham education has to draw our ire no matter where it’s happening and on whose watch. Whether it’s the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow online charter school network in Ohio that abruptly closed its doors a few weeks back or all but two Washington high schools giving out diplomas based on lies, political ideology should have nothing to do with our response. There is no justification for railing against one and staying silent on the other.

It’s hard to know what the appropriate consequences are for those who were active and willing participants in the systemic deception and fraud we now know occurred in the city’s schools. Nat Malkus, a resident scholar and the deputy director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, certainly gives us something to think about when he points out that in medicine, law, and automobile manufacturing, fraud and deception lead to serious consequences not only professionally but civilly and criminally as well. He reminds us that educators in Atlanta were fired and even went to jail for getting caught changing student answers on state tests in 2009. A harsh punishment indeed. “But is systematically changing test answers any worse than systematically turning high schools into diploma mills?” Malkus asks.

Those decisions are best left to those in Washington who now have the enormous responsibility of restoring trust and truth to what has suddenly become a school system mired in doubt. In the meantime, I’ll just keep hoping for a day when folks who support reform—as I do—will take off their partisan and tribal blinders and actually stand up for accountability simply because it’s the right thing to do.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in a slightly different form in Education Week.

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

NOTE: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute occasionally publishes guest commentaries on its blogs. The views expressed by guest authors do not necessarily reflect those of Fordham.

On January 9, the State Board of Education again gave advocates of career and college readiness cause for dismay. With just one dissenting vote, the board adopted a resolution recommending that the legislature extend to the Classes of 2019 and 2020 the much-derided high school graduation alternatives established last year—also upon the board’s recommendation—for the Class of 2018.

It is difficult to add much to what’s already been said about the softened graduation requirements that the board would now extend to the following two graduating classes. In short, they permit an Ohio student to obtain a high school diploma without demonstrating the minimum academic competencies needed to be successful in post-secondary education and employment. These requirements are a big step back from the much more rigorous standards adopted by the legislature in 2009, which still provided appropriate flexibility for students who might wish to choose a different route to a diploma.

All this to avert a “graduation apocalypse” that never truly materialized. ODE data show that 77 percent of students in the Class of 2018 are on track to graduate without the additional options, far higher than initially projected. A staff presentation at the November board meeting also showed that by the end of their sophomore year, approximately 66 percent of students in the Class of 2019 have already met end-of-course test requirements, which is approximately the same as students in the Class of 2018 at the end of their sophomore year. Taken together, the data fairly shout the question of just what problem the board is solving by proposing to extend the dubious alternatives for this year’s graduating class to the next two. 

In its narrow focus on how many students will and won’t “walk” on commencement day, the state board lost sight of the very purpose of a high school diploma. As board member Kara Morgan said the day of the vote, “The ultimate outcome isn’t high school graduation but success of those students who graduate high school in the future.” That Dr. Morgan couldn’t find one other member of the 19-member board to agree is discouraging.

The board says it needs more data on the additional pathways put in place last year before it can assent to ending them. This is a cry often heard from decision-makers who’d just as soon avoid making decisions. It doesn’t take data to know that showing up for school and holding down a part-time job are not a demonstration of preparation for success beyond high school. 

The board’s action has several unintended consequences. First, it raises still more doubt for children, parents, and educators about the standards to which students will be held. When a child enters the ninth grade, she should have reasonable certainty about what will be required of her to graduate within four years. By reversing its position that the softened requirements were only meant for the Class of 2018, the board causes everyone to wonder how many additional changes are in store. 

Second, it provides an “out” for legislators of weaker resolve to sidestep their responsibility. The board is charged by statute to base any requirements for graduation “upon demonstration of mastery of knowledge and skills through competency-based learning models.” The recommendations put forth by the board clearly do not fulfill this responsibility.  

Third, it puts Ohio at a disadvantage compared to other states. At the board’s December meeting, ODE provided a helpful analysis of graduation requirements in various other states. This analysis indicated that although some states with testing requirements for graduation required activities in addition to evidence of academic proficiency, none offered them in place of it. While a more detailed analysis would be needed to validate this conclusion, the ostensibly one-time provisions for Ohio’s Class of 2018 do indeed seem weak in comparison with other states. Massachusetts, for instance, is widely recognized as the nation’s highest performer in K-12 education. While there are multiple reasons for the “Massachusetts Miracle,” one of them is undoubtedly the state’s high standards and expectations—as well as its commitment to stick to its plan despite continual pressures to retreat.

The General Assembly must reject the recommendation of the State Board of Education to perpetuate the soft, “one-time” alternatives given to the Class of 2018. The state’s original vision of high standards with flexibility and of demonstrated readiness for college and career is still the right one for Ohio. We should stick with the plan.

Jack Archer served as Director of Basic Education Oversight at the Washington State Board of Education until his retirement in 2016. He lives in Fairview Park.